Attack of the Christmas Greeting Cards

The following warning appeared on the SANS Storm Center. Ignore it at your peril!

With the holiday season upon us, lots of folks (me included) have elected to send online greeting cards instead of using traditional paper cards, "saving" the carbon and emissions footprint involved in traditional mail services (not that email is carbon free or anything, but that's a whole other discussion).

Just a word of warning - as happens every year, fake greeting cards are being circulated via email, with malware payloads attached. We got our first reader email on this today, Daniel received a greeting card with a ".net" at the tail end of a legitimate domain. The attackers even went to the trouble of making their site look like the real one! These attacks use more sophisticated phishing techniques every year, and the malware payloads are of course also more difficult to detect each time.

So if you get a greeting card, even if it's from someone you know, be sure that the link you click is taking you where you expect to go. Check that the link is to a reputable greeting card site, and that it doesn't have "extra" characters at the end, that would indicate you are going someplace else entirely. Even better, "don't click that link!" - copy and paste it into your browser rather than clicking it directly, that way you have that much more assurance that you know where you are browsing to.

Have a safe, malware-free holiday everyone !