posted
a serious warning is being forwarded throughout the US Govt:
Trojan Hidden in Emails Pretending to Come from the FTC By Daniel Nicholas 23:09, October 30th 2007
Our email accounts’ inboxes have been recently “attacked” by messages that pretend to be coming from the Federal Trade Commission. They say they come from frauddep*ftc.gov, but, as some of us might have already guessed, these email messages are just fakes! Not only that they haven’t been sent by the Federal Trade Commission, but these messages carry also a nasty Trojan within.
The Federal Trade Commission, which itself has declared war against the malicious software that is flowing on the Internet, has warned yesterday the consumers about these fake emails. The consumers are asked not to open the emails that pretend to be coming from the Federal Trade Commission because they carry an attachment that can download a virus.
However, the emails say that they are from frauddep*ftc.gov and they have also the institution’s governmental seal. Still, according to FTC they have not been issued by the agency, which eventually has discovered they are fakes and that their attachments and links can download a virus. According to the agency, this virus has been created to steal passwords and account numbers.
David Torok from the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection has said that they are concerned. “The virus that’s attached to the email is particularly virulent.”
The agency has eventually asked the recipients of the emails to forward the problematic emails to spam*uce.gov, which is the Federal Trade Commission’s database used in investigations.