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Phishers Use Keywords in Malware Attacks
By Brian Prince

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The minds behind the Asprox botnet are retaliating against visitors to their phishing page who put profanity or other flagged keywords into the phishers' phony log-in form instead of legitimate data. The phishing page contains logic that recognizes words like "phish" and retaliates with exploits targeting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, according to a security researcher.

Criticize the people behind the Asprox botnet, and they take it personal—so much so that they will bombard you with malware, according to a report by SecureWorks.

The botnet, now at least 50,000-strong with bots, is sending out phishing e-mails posing as messages from banks in the United States and United Kingdom. The links inside the e-mail lead to a page with a phishing form that reacts to both incomplete forms and forms containing certain keywords, including profanity or the word "phish." If users who filled out the form improperly click on the “confirm” button, their computers are assaulted with malware in retaliation.

Interestingly, the botnet does not seem to infect people merely for clicking on the link in the e-mail, and if the form appears to be filled out with legitimate log-in data the phishers can steal, the victim is redirected to the main page of their banking Web site, according to SecureWorks.

Those who fill it out with illegitimate data, however, are hit with a number of exploits targeting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows.

Read the rest of this article on eWEEK.com.

 




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