Spam email piracy warning hoax

Cybercriminals are playing on people's fears of becoming unwittingly involved in piracy with a new spam campaign.

A recent agreement between ISPs and the music industry will see broadband subscribers whose accounts are being used for piracy sent letters warning them that the activity is illegal.

Opponents of the plan have often said that this could lead to innocent people being accused of piracy as their wireless networks could have been hacked into.

And now security researchers at Trend Micro have discovered a spam campaign that attempts to play on these fears.

With subject lines such as 'Your internet access is going to get suspended', the emails warn the recipient that an organisation called the Internet Service Provider Consorcium [sic] are aware that the account is being used for "illegal activities".

A file which is supposedly a report of illegal activities in the last six months is attached to the email. However, the file is in fact malware.

"Recipients are most likely to be motivated by fear to fall for this ruse. It is, after all, the internet surfer’s worst nightmare to have all their internet activities known to other parties — epecially those who threaten legal prosecution," said Macky Cruz of Trend Micro.

The company recommended that all unsolicited email should be considered suspect.

www.trendmicro.com