A malicious spam email campaign is circulating email inboxes in the form of a $200 Apple Store Gift Card, according to MacRumors.com.
The message reads “Dear client! You got our $200 Apple Store Gift Card” and is created to look exactly like a legitimate Apple email. It encourages users to click the attachment or the hyperlink, which says “Please click the link or look at the attachment to obtain the Apple Store Gift Card code.”
When users follow these instructions they will actually download malware that steals personal information and data from their computer. But according to the report from MacRumors, the malware attacks only Windows-based computers.
The most interesting thing about the campaign is that hackers are mashing up the infection vectors and are relying on both a malicious hyperlink and a malicious attachment in the email. This way users can get infected by either clicking the link found in the email or by opening the attachment, said cybercrime researcher Dancho Danchev.
Email spamming, phishing and scamming have been circulating and attacking people’s computers for many years now, but lately hackers have become even more creative than before. In July, SCMagazine.com reported a ransomware scam that has been targeting Apple Safari users, which takes computers hostage until the user pays a fee in order to unlock it. When users visit a website that has been seeded by a malicious code, they are informed that their browser has been hijacked and receive a message that claims to be coming from the FBI. The message, which looks legitimate, says that the user’s browser has been hijacked because their computer was used to violate copyright laws, initiate illegal access or view porn.