Over the last week in the Labs, we have
alerted on and
discovered a series of news alert spoofed emails which spread malware when links in the emails are clicked. Malicious emails of this news-related, social engineering tactic have been circulating for the last
few months. They have evolved into attempts to entice end users to click on their malicious links by presenting news story links for users to click. Until these two recent examples of social engineering with the CNN and MSNBC spoof emails, the illegitimate emails were easy to spot. They simply were one line emails with outlandish headlines.