You Want Fries With That Trojan?
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Who can resist the idea of some free, mouth-wateringly good Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips swallowed down with a delicious Strawberry Triple Thick Shake early on a Sunday morning? Nobody who isn't named RoboCop, that's who – and that's how the spammers get you. Now that we've become immune to naked celebs and cheap pharmaceuticals, the bad guys are going for our guts.
The security alert comes courtesy of NakedSecurity, the blog of security firm Sophos. Graham Cluely warns that in the past few days, people across the globe have received an email claiming to be "manager@mcdonalds.com," inviting them to print out the attached invitation card and bring it to "Free Breakfast Day" on an upcoming date. If glaring the grammatical errors and excessive exclamation points in passages like "Every manager will gladly take your card and issue you a tasty dish of Free Day! And remember! Free Day is whole five free dishes!" don't tip you off to the email's dubious nature, you're in for a not-so-tasty surprise: a hot, steamy plateful of the Troj/Bredo-HU trojan.
"In an attempt to fool computer users into believing the file is safe, the EXE file has a Word icon," Cluely warns. The way to a computer user's hard drive is through his stomach, we guess.
Image credit: justsaypictures.com
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Virgnarus
June 22, 2011 at 6:32am
This is definitely a step up from the common malicious spam treating oneself to various items that they probably have no interest in or are easily discernable as spoofs. It provides a product that is commonly desirable, easily accessible, and at a discount that is very realistic and not overtly over-the-top. With spam like this, I can see many people would chomp down on the hook given that it seems like a reasonable advertisement provided by a reliable brand. An ad for a sexual enhancement offered by a no-named company provided by some awkward randomized email address I would immediately disregard. But a simple electronic coupon for some free food at any local McDonalds? Sounds perfectly good to me!
Of course, that all gives way when what you see is a poorly constructed babelfished mishmash of words and grammatical markings. Still, I can see this being problematic when people end up thinking this stuff is nothing more than an electronic cousin of the veritable coupon pages that land in their physical mailboxes every week.
Silencer
June 21, 2011 at 8:49pm
Anyone so stupid as to fall for that crap, deserves what they get. Good, they'll feed the tech industry a little with some virus removal appointments. And some customers, will learn something.
ShyLinuxGuy
June 21, 2011 at 4:31pm
Note to self: when craving fast food and not thinking straight, open free fast food offers emails in Ubuntu :P
Even if this was legit, there's no point in downloading a program to get coupons. Even noobs should know something's up.
bikerbub
June 21, 2011 at 4:51pm
they said it was disguised with the icon being one that looked like a word document.
GRANDMOTHERS EVERYWHERE ARE IN DANGER!
someuid
June 21, 2011 at 2:02pm
Phew! I'm safe. I prefer Burger King.
Oh look an email from Burger King's manager for a free me........!$#%%^H^H^H^H^H^H>
don2041
June 21, 2011 at 1:55pm
Every day I think people can,t possibly get any stupider. Every day I am proven horribly wrong.
Holly Golightly
June 21, 2011 at 12:19pm
You have to be a Grade-A idiot to think Mc.Donalds would ever give you program to download. I think these hackers get dumber by the minute.
Cleaver
June 21, 2011 at 12:47pm
Well I think the hackers are counting on there being millions of Grade-A Idiots out there. Sadly, there are no shortage of those.
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