Fake Phishing Attacks Increase, Sell Meds

Spammers never depend on fixed strategies. They cannot afford to attach themselves to a single method of mass mailing. It does happen that an old attack method is revisited—a minor change is applied to the messages, just to match the changing scenarios on the Internet or perhaps expand the spammers’ focus. During the last couple of weeks, we have again been observing spam attacks abusing the email templates of well-known brands. However, there is a small but significant difference: they are generating phishing-like emails and redirecting users to meds websites instead of phishing websites. These emails are formatted to look like receipts or alerts originating from e-commerce sites or social networking sites.
It seems as if spammers are keen to try spreading panic and then in the process advertise their pharmacy products. In this way, users may be forced at least to visit the meds website. This may not happen in the case of attacks with the usual subject lines or mail bodies that show clear signs of the health spam category. We have provided a few examples below for users to understand the types of emails observed during the recent times.
Sample 1: In this example, spammers are attempting to alert recipients that their domain registration has been suspended. Users are redirected to a meds site after they click on the supplied URL.

Sample2: (continue reading...)