I've seen a noticeable uptick in the number of spam emails which have slipped past my company's spam filter in the past couple of weeks. The most alarming of which are a series of fake messages from eBay regarding my seller account. I didn't click on any links and recognized them for what they were because I don't have an eBay seller account. This new approach tricking you into downloading malware has a name, it's called spear phishing, and the version I've been subject to is far less insidious than this account reported by Networkworld.

According to the Networkworld story, a few employees at Dekalb Medical Center in Decatur, Ga. received emails alerting them that they'd been laid off. The email directed them to click on a link for career counseling, the link took them to a page which automatically downloaded a keylogger program onto their computers. The email was addressed from dekalb.org, the company's proper domain name. As quickly as IT departments can figure out new filters to catch spam, hackers are out there figuring out how to work around them. It's a never-ending battle, and it doesn't seem like the good guys are winning. The moral of the story: Never click on a link in an email, no matter who its from. That's what it's come to, I'm afraid. Oh, and if you get laid off by email, and it isn't spear phishing, you're probably better off working somewhere else anyway. — Brian Ward

Go to story from Networkworld

Technorati tags: spear phishing, spam.