Scammers pretend to be friendly office printers
Hackers have found a new hook to trick people into opening malicious attachments: send emails that purport to come from office printers, many of which now have the ability to email scanned documents.
"This is a new tactic we haven't really seen before," said Paul Wood, senior intelligence analyst for Symantec.cloud, the company's Web-based security and email branch. The emails invariably contain some kind of Trojan downloader, which can be used to download other malware or steal documents from the computer.
Symantec published examples of the emails collected recently in its latest monthly Symantec Intelligence Report, released on Tuesday. The emails at first glance look quite convincing, with a subject line "Fwd: Scan from a HP Officejet." The email reads "Attached document was scanned and sent to you using a Hewlett-Packard HP Officejet 05701J" and then "Sent by Morton."
