CEO subpoena scam fires up anew

April 17, 2008 —

After tricking several thousand executives into downloading malicious software
earlier this week, online scammers started up their subpoena
phishing scam again Wednesday, but on a much smaller scale.

First reported Monday, the phishers send a small number of e-mail messages
to senior executives within companies, often CEOs, telling them that they've
been subpoenaed for a federal court case. The e-mails direct the victim to a
Web site that is very similar to a legitimate California federal court page,
but ending in "...-uscourts.com," rather than the "....uscourts.gov"
Web domain actually used by federal courts.

Although they end with the same letters, the domains used in this scam are
actually different from and not connected with the uscourts.com
Web site, which offers access to court records in some jurisdictions.

The e-mail
sent to executives is specially crafted to appear legitimate, a tactic called
"spear-phishing." The emails include the executive's name, company's
name and even the correct phone number.

Executives who click on the link in the e-mail are then told that they need
to download a plug-in in order to read the subpoena. That plug-in is actually
malicious software.

Although the U.S. federal court system uses email to communicate information
about cases, subpoenas for new cases are not served via e-mail.

Verisign, which estimates that about 2,000 people were tricked by the scam
on Monday, believes that Wednesday's attack was on a much smaller scale. Late
Wednesday the company's iDefense group had tracked only about 100 infections,
said Matt Richard, director of iDefense's Rapid Response Team.

Security experts have been fighting the phishers. By Tuesday they'd managed
to get the first phishing Web site taken down, only to have the second one pop
up on Wednesday.

Because the attack targets such a small number of victims, anti-spam companies
have had a hard time filtering the e-mails and antivirus companies have been
similarly pressed to block the malicious software that the attackers are using.

Late Wednesday, antivirus companies were not blocking this latest version of
the malware, said John Bambenek, a security researcher at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and volunteer at the SANS
Internet Storm Center.

IDG News Service