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Junk mailings touting all kinds of products, including steeply discounted luxury item knockoffs, pose threats beyond dodgy products.
Forget about getting a free lunch. People will settle for a steep discount when they try and keep up (or beat) the Joneses with the latest high-tech gadget.
Last year it was the iPhone from Apple. But its full price of $399 pales besides that of the Vertu signature phones. Legitimate Vertu models, made by a subdivision of Nokia, adorned with gold and diamonds cost thousands of dollars.
Security vendor McAfee warned against the allure of replica sites touting these vastly discounted copies. Spammers try to entice visitors to the pages, constructed to resemble Vertu's look and feel.
McAfee found these sites have hosting in the US, Germany, and Hong Kong. Some of the sites appear legitimate; others pose concerns after a modicum of digging:
Some of them seem clean; others are known for bulletproof hosting services and their relationship with the Russian Business Network, an alleged cybercrime organization.
The registrars are also diverse (Estonia, Russia, and Korea) but more questionable. It is surprising that these do not require any name verification before accepting registrations. But once you know that a lot of spam and malware-related Web sites come from them, their permissiveness is easier to understand.
Registrant addresses and e-mails give us an inkling regarding the nationality of their owners: China and Russia.
Regular SecurityProNews readers will understand how completely unsurprised we are at that last revelation.
We have been told previously that education will help people see through these come-ons. Somehow a chat or two with a security pro will undo whatever ingrained motivations people have that lead them to fall for spammed products. We aren't convinced. Protection, not education, matters more for the people security pros protect.
About
the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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