Beware of latest Phishing scam!

Microsoft have asked Christmas shoppers to be aware of the latest phishing scam. The scam uses false credit card reports. This infects devices with Cerber ransomware. The email that people receive appears to be informing individuals about false pending charges to their credit cards.

A word document is attached to the email and people are asked to follow the instructions stated in the document to avoid paying the ‘charges’. These instructions if followed however actually allows an attached macro downloader to infect the device being used with Cerber ransomware, if authorised, files then start being encrypted instantly.

Victims of this phishing scam who don’t have good anti-virus on their computers may have to pay a ransom fee to receive a decryption key to unlock the encrypted files.

The email being sent has inconsistencies that people can watch out for:

The email asks users to enable macros, Microsoft notes – Credit card companies will not do this.
The email includes the local name of the victim’s email address.
The email is not sent from a credit card company email address.
The sender address and the signature on the email do not match.
There are errors in the writing of the email.