The phishing emails appear to be official emails from Apple.com, with the title “Finally. The amazing iPhone 5. Now available in black edition.” The body of the message shows a hand holding a transparent iPhone, followed by an enticing offer to “check it out,” according to MacRumors.

Although there’s been much speculation about the next generation iPhone, Apple has not set a release date for it. In fact, Apple hasn’t even announced it yet, but that isn’t stopping this cleverly crafted Mac-themed scam from spreading.

So what are you checking out when you click the link to see the new iPhone 5?

You won’t receive any info about the smartphone, but you will enable a rigged Windows file to run malicious code on your computer. And you’ll also be taken to a phony Apple Web page that asks for your Apple ID and other sensitive information.

Apple announces new products, especially ones of this magnitude, in highly publicized press conferences. So if you receive an unsolicited email purporting to have information about the new iPhone 5, ignore it, DELETE IT WITHOUT EVEN READING IT.

story from: http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/cybercriminals-hoping-youll-bite-iphone-5-bait-0813/

This malware is quite well detected by many antivirus companies, but not all. It is a fairly standard Zapchast IRC trojan that will attempt to download lots of other crap & malware to your computer.

It also appears to try to  perform a DDOS flood attack against several other competing Mirc users and channels to block their channels, so no doubt will turn out to be connected to the typical fake AV scams and stealing your money

New Fast Flux Botnet for the Holidays: Could it be Storm Worm 3.0/Waledac 2.0?
http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/Calendar/20101230
Those of us here at Shadowserver hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season and are ready to bring in the new year. We were trying to relax and enjoy relatively quiet times until we noticed a new spam campaign that recently started. At first it looked like your regular old holiday e-card scams that have been around for years.

However, upon closer inspection it looks like we could be dealing with the next generation of Storm Worm or Waledac. If you consider Waledac to be Storm Worm 2.0, this looks like it could be version 3.0 or at least Waledac 2.0. There are no real version numbers of course, but we don’t have anything else to call it yet. What’s it involve you ask?

CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW BOTNET

Well here’s the list of what we’ve seen so far:

* Large scale Spam campaigns sending out e-mails with links
* New malicious domains that are fast flux! (TTL of 0 and name servers that frequently update IPs)
* Links are to several hacked websites hosting HTML pages that refresh to new malicious domains
* Links are also directly to new malicious domains
* Malicious domains hosting links to fake flash player and refreshes to exploit pages
* Malware installs that begin beaching to several hosts over HTTP (what we dubbed HTTP2p with Waledac)
* Malware that’s been updated to look a bit more like legitimate than past variants
* A very buggy network that is not often available (upstream devices not available)
* Changing/Updated binaries

AVOID THESE E-CARD MESSAGES:

Let’s start with the Spam Campaign. We’ve seen a multitude of subject lines and bodies. Below you’ll find a list of subjects we’ve seen and an example e-mail message. These are coming from all over the Internet with spoofed sender addresses.

Greeting for you!
Greeting you with heartiest New Year wishes
Greetings to You
Happy New Year greetings e-card is waiting for you
Happy New Year greetings for you
Happy New Year greetings from your friend
Have a happy and colorful New Year!
l want to share Greeting with you
New Year 2011 greetings for you
You have a greeting card
You have a New Year Greeting!
You have received a greetings card
You’ve got a Happy New Year Greeting Card!

Once again we need to warn you about a scam involving Microsoft Security Essentials
Security Essentials is a free Antivirus program from Microsoft available to any windows user with a validated copy of a supported desktop version of windows ( XP SP3, Vista SP2 Windows 7 ) You should only download it from the Microsoft Security Essentials website
The scammers have created a look a like site with links to download Security Essentials BUT following the links you have to create a membership with them & pay for the privilege of downloading free software. It is the same scam that I told you about in this post about Adobe Reader
This one appears to be a different bunch of scammers but with the same result. They will clear your credit card & sell all your details to anyone they can.
One malware researcher used their links to download Security Essentials & got a nasty trojan instead of the genuine program

Fake Microsoft Security Essentials site

If you read carefully, you see they do say in the tiny small print that MSE is a free program and you are paying for the benefit and convenience of downloading it from them instead of the approved free Microsoft site

We stress again that http://securityessentials-2011.com is a scam site that is trying to steal your money and is not to be trusted . Only download Microsoft Security Essentials direct from Microsoft

Fake Skype website

Skype email scam

Once again Don’t fall for it only only use the genuine Skype site to download skype & update it

Adobe PDF scam email

If you are foolish enough to follow the links then you end up on a scam site trying to sell you an unknown PDF reader, BUT the sting is that you don’t just download & try it or even buy it outright. Oh no ! you have to create a membership and give all your details before you even find out how much is being taken from your bank or credit card.

Don’t fall for it and only update Adobe reader from the official Adobe site, when the actual Update is released ( It is expected in Early October 2010)
Or of course use an alternative PDF reader of your choice, Just be aware that PDF vulnerabilities do affect all PDF readers and some might not get updated as quickly as others. Just because you use an alternative doesn’t mean that you are immune or safe from vulnerabilities in Adobe products

If you have received an email proporting to be from the APA asking for your card details, please be warned this a scam. Please report it to the national police fraud unit on 0300 123 2040 or online at actionfraud.org.uk/report_fraud. Note that the website at animal-protection-agency.co.uk (currently offline on 28th September 2010) is a fake clone of the real website http://www.apa.org.uk
Now live is animal-protection-agency.com & has taken over this phishing scam
A currently spreading email reads

Dear pet owner,

The Animal Protection Agency (APA) proudly announce that we managed to raise a fund worthing GBP 1.000.000 and will be donated to 10.000 pet owners.

If you own a pet and you would like to receive this payment of GBP 100 please click the link bellow.

www.animal-protection-agency.co.uk

Sincerely,
Andrew Morrison
Senior Manager

Until fairly recently, nobody bothered with changing their DNS server. Everybody used the ones provided by their ISP. Today, there are several providers worldwide that provide free public DNS service with additional features like  blocking known malware sites,  blocking known phishing sites, parental controls and some even say that their services are quicker and more  reliable.

Here are a  few of the  better known and more reliable ones . It's up to you to choose the one that has the  features or protection that you want.

You will  find instructions on  how to change DNS addresses on their webpages.

OpenDNS
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Google Public DNS
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

Norton DNS (Symantec Corporation)
198.153.192.1
198.153.194.1

ScrubIT (ScrubDNS Inc.)
67.138.54.100
207.225.209.66

DNS Advantage (Neustar Inc)
156.154.70.1
156.154.71.1

Comodo Secure DNS (Comodo Security Solutions Inc.)
156.154.70.22
156.154.71.22

I really can’t believe anyone will think the FBI issue or verify credit cards/ATM cards & charge you $95 insurance fee for the privilege

Once again the advice is, if it doesn’t look right, then it isn’t right so delete these scam emails and don’t reply to them or phone the numbers given. All that will do is get you a big phone bill from dialling a premium rate international phone number

A slightly different approach came into my inbox today which asked me to confirm the item in my shopping basket. Now I haven’t shopped with Littlewoods online but you can be sure that thousands of people have and the same scam will be applied to just about every well known online shopping site this season.

The email looks quite believable

The website if you follow the link looks exactly like the real Littlwoods shopping site Account sign in page EXCEPT that the real Littlewwoods or ALL reputable shopping sites will have a Padlock icon and the  site address will start with HTTPS and the address bar will turn green to show that you are on a secure site

This screenshot shows the fake site and I have blanked out the address for safety reasons

These show how a genuine site will appear in Internet Explorer 8 on left and Firefox on right. Both show the padlock icon and a green safe address bar. A genuine shopping site will always start HTTPS to show a secure site when you are asked to put in any details. The front page of the site might be a normal http:
Unfortunately a lot of well known shopping sites haven’t yet signed up to the Extended Valuation green bar very secure system yet so watch for the closed padlock and HTTPS in the address bar to show a secure site. In Firefox browser the closed padlock is on the bottom right hand corner of the page, not in the browser address bar

I strongly recommend using ROBOFORM which keeps all passwords in a secure encrypted database that only you (not a keylogger or malware) can access and use it to create safe secure passwords

The advert on google looks like a search listing and it is only apparant that it is a sponsored listing or advert on close inspection

if you look at the screenshots of the 2 sites, you will see that there is very little difference between them and an unwary visitor can soon get infected

Don’t get caught out by it and get your passwords stolen. The downloads on the fake site are recognized by several antiviruses as a password stealer and downloads lots of other trojans and malware

the genuine site is on the left, the fake site on the right

I strongly recommend using ROBOFORM which keeps all passwords in a secure encrypted database that only you (not a keylogger or malware) can access and use it to create safe secure passwords