With all the proliferation of phone home for update systems in even trivial software packages these days, neophyte users can easily get confused about legitimate upgrades and imposters. So someone is trying to take advantage of this with an automated version of an old school social engineering attack via Skype spam. Someone/something/.someone's-botnet on skype last night contacted users who reported it to me. The messages were formatted to resemble Microsoft update messages or an AV scan with a link to click to update and/or repair malware in a number of Microsoft products. None of the users who reported it to me clicked on the link so its not clear what the installed malware was after. A series of users with the name "Scan Alert" followed by the registered trade mark sign originating from a numeric range of skype userids following the form: scan.alert.o<number> ...have been sending these unsolicited messages. These id's seem to be registered in the US. Please warn your users to ignore and be wary of social engineering attacks purporting to be upgrades via IM, because without doubt the persons behind this will try other variants. A little bit of googling indicates these folks have been active for at least two weeks. cheers, --dr -- World Security Pros. Cutting Edge Training, Tools, and Techniques Tokyo, Japan November 29/30 - 2007 http://pacsec.jp pgpkey http://dragos.com/ kyxpgp
