Spam campaign uses Northern Territory Library as bait

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A spam email purporting to be legitimate news from the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ is circulating across Australia and leading users to an infected website in Korea, experts at Sophos have warned.

Spam campaign uses Northern Territory Library as bait
The message uses the subject ‘Life for Life’ and leads with the recent news that the Northern Territory Library has received the '2007 Access to Learning Award' from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"It's the kind of spam that Australia might fall for as all the news is current and accurate," warned Paul Ducklin head of technology at Sophos APAC.

"Whether the attack is purely targeted to Australians is yet to be confirmed but it’s a very specific form of identity theft," said Ducklin.

The email invites recipients to read more by clicking on links which take users to an infected website in Korea, said Ducklin.

The malware downloaded from Korea is the Mal/ObfJS-H. ObfJS and aims to exploit a Windows XML vulnerability that will then download a malicious Windows program.

“If you are genuinely interested in knowing more about the news go to the site yourself,” said Ducklin.

The Windows vulnerability was patched in 2006, so those who keep their patches up to date will be at a low risk of infection, said Ducklin.
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