If you need any more reasons to be particularly careful when opening an email attachment, here’s one for you. A new Gmail hack campaign is currently making the rounds, and a single click could be enough to infect your computer and put your data at risk.
Last week, Trustwave senior security researcher Diana Lopera published a blog post about a frightening new email hack campaign. According to Lopera, scammers are sneakily attaching malicious files to emails using file formats that would not normally raise suspicion. They are using this technique to spread the data-stealing Vidar malware.
The emails are short and direct the reader’s attention to the attachment. The attachment in question is often named “request.doc,” but it is really an ISO file. As Lopera explains, ISO is a disk image file format cybercriminals occasionally use to store malware. It might look like a text document, but the ISO actually contains two files. One is a Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) file named “pss10r.chm” and the other is an executable named “app.exe.”
As you hopefully know by now, never ever open an email attachment from a source you don’t recognize. In fact, even if you do recognize the sender, double-check everything first. There are plenty of scams that involve using similar addresses to convince victims of their legitimacy.
More details: https://bgr.com/tech/dangerous-new-one-click-gmail-hack-puts-your-private-data-at-risk