Wednesday, July 14, 2010

How To Identify an E-mail is Malicious

At some point, you have either been faced with or you will be faced with receiving an e-mail from someone you know personally that looks a bit odd. What are some of the things that you can look for to make that decision to click a link or not? This is an example of an e-mail that was actually delivered to a friends inbox and the link in the e-mail was a malicious download. Take a close look at the recipients list, you can see in this example that they are listed in alphabetical order. This is an indication that the attacker is sending e-mails sequentially to all contacts in a hijacked e-mail account. Most times, the SUBJECT line is blank. Another clue is there will be no text in the body of the e-mail, just a link. Remember, if you ever have a question about the validity of an e-mail, it is better to error on caution and just delete it.

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