By Dancho Danchev

On a daily basis, we intercept hundreds of thousands of fraudulent or malicious emails whose purpose is to either infect users with malicious software or turn them into victims of fraudulent schemes. About 99% of these campaigns rely on social engineering tactics, and in the cases where they don’t include direct links to the actual malware, they direct users to the market leading Black Hole Exploit Kit.

In terms of volume and persistence, throughout January, 2013, a single malicious campaign impersonating FedEx topped our metrics data. What’s so special about this campaign? It’s the fact that the digital fingerprint of one of the most recently introduced malware variants used in the campaign corresponds to the digital fingerprint of a malware-serving campaign that we’ve already profiled, indicating that they’ve been launched by the same cybercriminal/gang of cybercriminals.

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By Dancho Danchev

At the end of October, a cybercriminal or group of cybercriminals launched three massive spam campaigns in an attempt to trick users into clicking on a deceptive link and downloading a malicious attachment. Upon execution, the malware phones back to the command and control servers operated by the party that launched it, allowing complete access to the infected PC.

This time they didn’t try impersonating USPS, UPS or DHL, but FedEx.

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