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Security Protection - Harry Waldron (CS)

Security Best Practices, Breaking News, & Updates

SPAM EMAIL - Why Unsubscribing is not a good idea

An excellent example of why you should never click on a URL in a spam email message. 

Kaspersky Weblog: Why Unsubscribing from spam is not a good idea 

QUOTE: Today I ran across an interesting piece of spam. The ending contained an offer to unsubscribe by clicking "here". Naturally, I clicked and landed on a web page (HTML) that supposedly checked my name against a database. The page then showed me the following message: "your address has been removed from the mailing list".

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? But ... the end of the HTML file contains Exploit.HTML.Mht which uses the MHTML URL Processing Vulnerability to download malware: in my case it was Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Small.gr and Trojan-Spy.Win32.Banker.s.

Good reminder - never, ever unsubscribe from spam. At best you let the spammer know your address is live, and at worst you end up with an infected computer.   Read more:

Malware Evolution: January to March 2005
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-013