The latest barrage of virus-laden spam e-mails announce that you’ve received “a postcard from a family member.” Here’s a security vendor confirming what you already knew – if you click on the links in the messages, you’ll be taken to web sites that will attack your computer with dozens of exploits, searching out computers that haven’t gotten all of their security updates.
In the last couple of days, the messages have begun morphing to refer to a greeting card or ecard, from a colleague/worshipper/admirer/neighbor etc.
It’s been going on for almost a week; I’m getting 20-30/day right now.
My clients have many kinds of protection on their office computers against this kind of attack, but the best defense continues to be your common sense and alertness. As always:
- Never, ever click on an unexpected attachment to an e-mail message.
- Never, ever click on strange URLs. Follow links with carefree abandon to and from legitimate web sites, but don’t click on links that arrive in spam e-mail, instant messages, web forums, or IRC chats, or that start from an untrustworthy web site.
