Online ‘Monopoly’ a Reminder That Spammers Don’t Play Fair

In the latest social-engineering tactic targeting online games players, a new spam campaign attempts to lure users into downloading a Monopoly game–though it’s more like a game of Russian roulette. The email is a seemingly innocuous invite from a random user (your first clue that this is something to avoid!). The message uses a subject line such as “Play Online Together” or “Tom has invited you to play Monopoly.”

If recipients follow the link to monopoly2009.com, they are greeted with a web page that looks fairly well done. It advertises “Monopoly” while giving a brief history of the game and providing some fun facts. It also, of course, encourages users to download the app using several links dispersed throughout the page.

No code is injected on users’ computers just by visiting the web page. They need to download and install monopoly.exe, which the site delivers. The executable file is just the first stage of the process, however. A fairly common tactic deployed by hackers is that the code installed as a result of the download is only the beginning. At this point the Trojan is activated on the victims’ computers, and it links to another computer and downloads the second stage of the malware, the piece that turns machines into a spam-sending zombie touting Canadian Pharmacy products.
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