GEC NEWS WIREESET spam filters detect a wave of scam emails luring internet users to buy luxury goods, mostly Ray-Ban sunglasses. The bogus websites where those heavily discounted fakes are offered, use no encryption and may be stealing victims’ payment card details. Previously ESET warned that this scam had largely targeted Facebook.
Over the last few months ESET researchers have detected tens of thousands of these scam emails. Parallel to adding email as a new attack vector, the criminals behind the scam have also extended their geographic reach. The bogus sunglasses stores often target particular countries using their respective currencies.
A few months ago they almost exclusively accepted US dollars, the Eurozone’s euro, British pounds, Canadian dollars and Australian dollars. However, the latest email spamming campaigns have been redirecting to pages that also accept less popular currencies such as the Brazilian Real, New Zealand dollars, Swedish kronor, Danish kroner, the Singapore dollar, Swiss francs, Norwegian kroner, and Czech koruna.
“Internet users should not lose their security instincts when pursuing extremely cheap deals, be it for sunglasses or anything else. Your payment card details open your wallet – so think twice about entering them at websites that have suspicious addresses, offer suspiciously priced goods or use unsecured communications channels,” said Lukáš Štefanko. ESET Malware Researcher.
