Malware and spam groups exploit US election fever
Source: Symantec
As the presidential election draws near, the level of malware and spam activity attempting to capitalize on interest in the campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has risen.
Over the past month, Symantec has blocked almost 8 million spam emails relating to the US presidential election. The volume of spam has increased steadily during that period, reflecting rising interest in the election as the November 8 polling day draws near.
The trend reflects one of the tactics most commonly used by spam groups. Emails concerning current events are more likely to get the attention of recipients, so are more likely to be opened.
Malware menace
The vast majority of election spam blocked by Symantec is traditional spam—unwanted and unsolicited emails. Some concern the election, others simply use the names of the candidates in the subject line to lure recipients into opening them. However, within this wave of election spam, there is a smaller but significant number of emails with malicious attachments. If opened, the attachments could download and install malware on to the recipient’s computer.
Two of the spam emails discovered by Symantec reference Republican nominee Donald Trump and contain the subject lines ‘Donald Trump’s Secret Letter’ and ‘Donald Trump Reavealed’ (sic). Both have .zip files attached, with one claiming it reveals Trump’s “secret emails”, while the other purports to reveal a photo of Trump groping a teenage girl. However, these attachments actually contain malware.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has also seen her name used in spam over the course of the campaign. An email campaign discovered by Symantec in August claimed to show a video of Clinton with an ISIS leader, but the attachment was, in fact, a malicious Java file that infected recipients with a remote access Trojan.
Read more: https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/malware-and-spam-groups-exploit-us-election-fever
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