UPS Customer Service pretending to come from UPS Customer Service [mailto:[email protected]] is another one from the current bot runs which try to download various Trojans and password stealers especially banking credential stealers, which may include cridex, dridex, dyreza and various Zbots, cryptolocker, ransomware and loads of other malware on your computer. They are using email addresses and subjects that will entice a user to read the email and open the attachment. A very high proportion are being targeted at small and medium size businesses, with the hope of getting a better response than they do from consumers.

Almost all of these also have a password stealing component, with the aim of stealing your bank, PayPal or other financial details along with your email or FTP ( web space) log in credentials. Many of them are also designed to specifically steal your Facebook and other social network log in details.

All the alleged senders, companies, names of employees and phone numbers mentioned in the emails are all innocent and are just picked at random. Some of these companies will exist and some won’t. Don’t try to respond by phone or email, all you will do is end up with an innocent person or company who have had their details spoofed and picked at random from a long list that the bad guys have previously found. The bad guys choose companies, Government departments and organisations with subjects that are designed to entice you or alarm you into blindly opening the attachment or clicking the link in the email to see what is happening.

Please read our How to protect yourselves page for simple, sensible advice on how to avoid being infected by this sort of socially engineered malware.

This one is somewhat more unusual than other similar UPS and delivery malware payload emails, because it was addressed personally to the recipient by first and last name. These are generally addressed to ” valued customer” or Dear sir, etc

The email looks like:

From: UPS Customer Service [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: December 9, 2014 11:25

To: [redacted]

Subject: [SPAM] UPS Customer Service

 

IMPORTANT DELIVERY

Dear [redacted]

You have received an important delivery from UPS Customer Service.

Please pick up the ePackage at the following Web address:

The ePackage will expire on Thursday December 11, 2014, 00:00:00 EDT

…………………………………………………………….

HOW TO PICK UP YOUR ePackage

* If the Web address above is highlighted, click on it to open a browser window. You will automatically be taken to the ePackage.

* If the Web address above is not highlighted, then follow these steps:

– Open a web browser window.

– Copy and paste the entire Web address into the ‘location’ or ‘address’ bar of the browser.

– Press enter.

Once you arrive at the ePackage web page, you can access the attached files and/or private message.

…………………………………………………………….

If you require assistance please contact UPS Customer Service.

Please note: This e-mail was sent from an auto-notification system that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

This e-mail is intended for the addressee shown. It contains information that is confidential and protected from disclosure. Any review,

dissemination or use of this transmission or its contents by persons or unauthorized employees of the intended organizations is strictly

prohibited.
__________________________________

Delivered by UPS ePackage

9 December 2014: ePackage_12092014_42.pdf.zip: Extracts to: ePackage_12092014_42.pdf.scr Current Virus total detections: 0/56

This is another one of the spoofed icon files that unless you have “show known file extensions enabled“, will look like a proper PDF file instead of the .exe file it really is, so making it much more likely for you to accidentally open it and be infected.

Be very careful with email attachments. All of these emails use Social engineering tricks to persuade you to open the attachments that come with the email. Whether it is a message saying “look at this picture of me I took last night” and it appears to come from a friend or is more targeted at somebody who regularly is likely to receive PDF attachments or Word .doc attachments or any other common file that you use every day.

The basic rule is NEVER open any attachment to an email, unless you are expecting it. Now that is very easy to say but quite hard to put into practice, because we all get emails with files attached to them. Our friends and family love to send us pictures of them doing silly things, or even cute pictures of the children or pets.

Never just blindly click on the file in your email program. Always save the file to your downloads folder, so you can check it first. Most ( if not all) malicious files that are attached to emails will have a faked extension. That is the 3 letters at the end of the file name. Unfortunately windows by default hides the file extensions so you need to Set your folder options to “show known file types. Then when you unzip the zip file that is supposed to contain the pictures of “Sally’s dog catching a ball” or a report in word document format that work has supposedly sent you to finish working on at the weekend, you can easily see if it is a picture or document & not a malicious program. If you see .EXE or .COM or .PIF or .SCR at the end of the file name DO NOT click on it or try to open it, it will infect you.

While the malicious program is inside the zip file, it cannot harm you or automatically run. When it is just sitting unzipped in your downloads folder it won’t infect you, provided you don’t click it to run it. Just delete the zip and any extracted file and everything will be OK. You can always run a scan with your antivirus to be sure. There are some zip files that can be configured by the bad guys to automatically run the malware file when you double click the zip to extract the file. If you right click any suspicious zip file received, and select extract here or extract to folder ( after saving the zip to a folder on the computer) that risk is virtually eliminated. Never attempt to open a zip directly from your email, that is guaranteed way to get infected. The best way is to just delete the unexpected zip and not risk any infection.