Fraudsters In Love With Valentine’s Day

By Lashan Clarke

While the world was celebrating Valentine’s Day this week, so were the fraudsters. During Valentine’s Day, a lot of malware and viruses are forwarded by users and thieves wanting to steal identities.

The Storm worm has been the most popular of the Valentine’s Day malware. It gained a considerable amount of media attention, and was an easy attack on computer users. Disguised as a Valentine’s Day message, receivers of the email would open the message and click on a link. Instead of receiving an ecard, they would be infected with a malicious .exe file. At least 19 out of 31 security software programs were unable to detect it.

Another scam this Valentine’s Day involved someone receiving a link to an ecard. It resembled an email sent by the popular online card company American Greetings. Instead users were infected with a rootkit that tracked sensitive information. Only 5 out of 32 software programs could detect it.