Don’t Wait, and DON’T CLICK!

If you browse or are redirected to a website or click a link and see a screen like the one below, do not wait, simply close the browser. That “Wait Please” is static text, however if you look at the page source there are several malicious javascripts (second picture) attempting to send you to a URL that usually has some malware or drive by download (FakeAV most of the time).

mal2

jscriptmal

I’ve seen quite a bit of this the last few weeks, and most of it has been the result of someone clicking on a link from within a spam email. Here’s a protip (pass on to your friends, family, colleagues and anyone who will listen): If you get an email that is concerning, don’t just blindly click the link. In the below case, if you simply hover your mouse over the links you’ll see they point to pages that have nothing to do with the company that the email is claiming to be from.

badverizon

If you must follow the link use a browser sandbox like sandboxIE.

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Mobile Malware via a FAX

This is a new school twist to an old school scam, fax machine spam.  Miscreants would send out bogus faxes with scam numbers many times just trying to hawk “dealz” or, in some cases try to phish info from the caller.  But, for the most part fax machine spam has subsided (i think, i have no real data, just a hunch).

A friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that several of these faxes appeared at her office over the last two days.  She forwarded me a scan of one to review.

You can see that this is all sorts of wrong, even the QR codes look like they were psychically  pasted (after the fact) on this fax.  What was interesting is that the QR code leads to a site that wants you to download an app (link for both Andoird and Apple devices) to install on your phone.  I’ve redacted the QR codes and numbers to protect the innocent (and inept).

Looking into it further these are bogus premium rate SMS apps that send text messages to numbers the scammers control, then you get charged for premium SMS messages and they make cash.  Be warned, don’t just scan QR codes everywhere.  I wonder how many people at my friends company used their neato smart phone to follow those codes and installed those apps?  Maybe it’s not a bad idea to protect your main corporate fax number a bit, too.