Peaches Posted April 8, 2009 Report Share Posted April 8, 2009 Tax Season is Phishing Seasonby Mary Ermitano (Anti-spam Research Engineer) As usual, the approaching tax season (April 15th is Tax Day in the US) also comes with tax-related online threats. With unemployment rates reaching record highs this year, cybercriminals have yet another opportunity to polish their social engineering techniques.Last year, spammed messages supposedly from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) delivered malware into systems. The email messages were sternly-worded. The intention was to alarm recipients of what these same messages claimed were incomplete tax forms, which could lead to tax avoidance fraud. High-profile institutions, including Fortune 500 companies and US Defense contractors, were prominent targets of this attack.This year, cybercriminals offer their recipients ways to save money by supposedly reducing their expenses on tax preparation transactions. The recent email samples no longer purport to come from the IRS, though. They do, however, offer tax relief services for tax help-seekers. And instead of downloading malware, unknowing users are tricked into giving out personal and sensitive information to phishers.Details & swcreenshots - TrendMicro - http://blog.trendmicro.com/ Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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