MailGuard has detected a new criminal-intent email linking to malware. This scam message exploits fake eBay branding to deceive victims into downloading a harmful file.
As shown in the screenshot above, this scam is designed to look like an invoice from eBay. The ‘view invoice’ link button in the message points to an archived file which contains JavaScript malware.
Scammers use cleverly designed fake messages like this one to deliver all sorts of malware including viruses, ransomware and spyware.
The fraudulent use of eBay’s branding helps the scam message seem more trustworthy, and looking at how well put together this scam is, it’s not hard to imagine that this email will deceive a lot of people.
Use of big brand-names by scammers is known as ‘brandjacking’; it’s a very successful technique for cybercriminals because a lot of people will feel safe clicking on a message that appears to come from a trusted company.
Read more about brandjacking, here.
Another way scammers try to make their emails look more realistic is by using sender domains that look like real company URLs. You can see in the screenshot of the message that the sending domain ‘ebayonlinesale.com’ looks quite convincing, but actually this domain was just registered yesterday in China, probably for the specific purpose of this scam.
If you see this message in your inbox, please delete it immediately. JavaScript malware scams like this can cause major virus infections that are very damaging to computer systems and extremely costly.
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