[NetBehaviour] Spam that delivers a pink slip.

[marc]

Spam that delivers a pink slip.

New trick lures worried employees to visit malicious site.

By Cara Garretson, NetworkWorld.com

Last week, a handful of employees at Dekalb Medical Center in Decatur, 
Ga., received e-mails saying they were being laid off. The subject line 
read “Urgent – employment issue,” and the sender listed on the message 
was at dekalb.org, which is the domain the medical center uses. The 
e-mail contained a link to a Web site that claimed to offer 
career-counseling information.

And so a few employees, concerned about their employment status and no 
doubt miffed about being laid off via e-mail, clicked on the link to 
learn more and unwittingly downloaded a keylogger program that was 
lurking at the site.

Score another one for spammers.

Called targeted spam or spear phishing, this type of spam that’s 
currently on the rise is particularly vexing because the spammer is able 
to “spoof” the sending e-mail address to make it look like it’s coming 
from within the organization of the recipient, making it difficult for 
spam filters to catch. And, unlike traditional spam that is sent in the 
thousands, spammers are sending just handfuls of these messages at a 
time, again making it difficult for antispam technology to detect.

more...
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/110106-spam-spear-phishing.html