Following on from New voicemail recived malware exploit and Please fill in your Employer Reference Number, policy – MQBI352715XB – malware we now have Virgin Media Automated Billing Reminder pretending to come from Virgin Media Online Services [[email protected]] is another one from the current bot runs which try to drop 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 have a password stealing component, with the aim of stealing 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.

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.

Once again we are unable to get any malware payload from it because the sites insist on some vulnerable softweare which we don’t have installed

There is an alternative version spreading with a subject of British Gas bill payment. pretending to come from British Gas [[email protected]] but with exactly the same virgin media email

Email looks like

Virgin Media Automated Billing Reminder

Date 17th June 2021
This e-mail has been sent you by Virgin Media to inform you that we were
unable to process your most recent payment of bill. This might be due to
one of the following reasons:

  • A recent change in your personal information such as Name or address.
  • Your Credit or Debit card has expired.
  • Insufficient funds in your account.
  • Cancellation of Direct Debit agreement.
  • Your Card issuer did not authorize this transaction.

To avoid Service interruption you will need to update your billing profile, failure to update your profile may lead in service cancellation and termination.
Please click on the link below to login to e-Billing. You will need to login using your primary E-mail address.
Login  to e-Billing
Once logged in you will need to fill in the required fields, please ensure all address and contact details are up to date, once submitted your account details will automatically be updated within 24 Hours.
Kind Regards,

Virgin Media
Customer Services Team
Ellis Willis

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. Be very careful when unzipping them and make sure you have “show known file extensions enabled“, And then look carefully at the unzipped file. If it says .EXE then it is a problem and should not be run or opened.