Phishing and Malware Emails Posing as Apple and the iPhone 5 Launch

[GGJstudios]

Well it's official, macs have become popular! I prefer the old world when scammers etc did not know what a mac was....

Time to pull the heads out of the sand and accept that Apple products are going to be targeted now that apple is growing at a huge rate. Time to ditch the macs are safe stereotype and proactively educate the users.

It has nothing to do with Macs becoming popular. Macs have always been targeted. This is nothing new. Are you forgetting that the very first virus in the wild targeted Apple computers? There has always been malware in the wild that attacked Apple users, and there have always been phishing scams such as this that target all computer users, regardless of their OS of choice.

 

[Cheerwino]

I am a friction retard.

 

[MH01]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134b Safari/6533.18.5)



Zzzz ....

Phishing is nothing new, and e-mails scams directed at Mac users are nothing new either.

Where's all the malware we've been promised every single year for the last decade? But NOW macs are popular. It'll be THIS year. They promise. Really. Honest.

Rinse, repeat. Each year.

Yup zzzzz..... Still have no idea how your responses are not treated as spam... They are just rinse, repeat ... Each and every thread. To be honest you might have been hacked for years now but due to your devotion all things Apple, would never accept it... Or even thought it was possible. Did it occur to you that not every malware is discovered or published on macrumors so you can rinse and repeat your comments.

When I got my first mac, there was nothing. So to have malware present... It blows!!!

 

[zeemeerman2]

Apple always keeps innovating!

Then, when you expect 4G networks should start to enroll soon, Apple gives you a 5G network compatible phone!

And when you think it's just the iPhone 5, think again. Apple is so much above all competition in terms of technology, they simply have to name it the iPhone 5G S!

Now with a transparent wallpaper, fully customizable in different kinds of transparency. It's just great, since when I take a picture with the camera, I always wanted to see "behind" the phone to see what I'm actually snapshotting. Now I can, so revolutionary!

Plus, if you so desire the standard water droplets background, just wait until it rains, catch a few droplets with the back of your iPhone and you have a nice and pretty wallpaper about water droplets. Now people are finally happy when it rains instead of always complaining about the rain. This simply revolutionary!

Then the QWERTY keyboard, that's just pure awesomeness! I always wanted to type 2 text messages at the same time. Now with 2 keyboards, I can! I can be gentle and use the soft screen keyboard, or I can use the hard keys if I wanted to be rude (e.g. for complaining about Android).

The technology behind this is simply outstanding! Just imagine what it takes to make those black plastic keys fully transparent for when using the phone in transparent mode!

And in the small letters at the bottom:
"MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer."
This is just priceless! This phone is the first iPhone 5G S with MMS support. If someone is able to deliver something that awesome, it just has to be Apple! Now beat that, HTC/Nokia/Samsung/etc...!

The blackness is purely amazing! Never before was another phone so black as this one. It's that black even black holes are jealous of the color of the iPhone 5G S!

But since black is just not a color, it's the absence of color and light, this is a paradoxical phone.

This is, because the iPhone IS light. It doesn't weigh much, so you can't tell it's heavy. Though it is still black. When it's not transparent. That is what makes it special.

This is the start of a new era. A phone of pure awesomeness. Black yet light, 5G capable, lightning fast (no thunderbolt because thunder is slower than lightning) and... and...

Wait whut? Is it just spam? Serious? Oh... I should have known...

 

[res1233]

Apple always keeps innovating!

Then, when you expect 4G networks should start to enroll soon, Apple gives you a 5G network compatible phone!

And when you think it's just the iPhone 5, think again. Apple is so much above all competition in terms of technology, they simply have to name it the iPhone 5G S!

Now with a transparent wallpaper, fully customizable in different kinds of transparency. It's just great, since when I take a picture with the camera, I always wanted to see "behind" the phone to see what I'm actually snapshotting. Now I can, so revolutionary!

Plus, if you so desire the standard water droplets background, just wait until it rains, catch a few droplets with the back of your iPhone and you have a nice and pretty wallpaper about water droplets. Now people are finally happy when it rains instead of always complaining about the rain. This simply revolutionary!

Then the QWERTY keyboard, that's just pure awesomeness! I always wanted to type 2 text messages at the same time. Now with 2 keyboards, I can! I can be gentle and use the soft screen keyboard, or I can use the hard keys if I wanted to be rude (e.g. for complaining about Android).

The technology behind this is simply outstanding! Just imagine what it takes to make those black plastic keys fully transparent for when using the phone in transparent mode!

And in the small letters at the bottom:
"MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer."
This is just priceless! This phone is the first iPhone 5G S with MMS support. If someone is able to deliver something that awesome, it just has to be Apple! Now beat that, HTC/Nokia/Samsung/etc...!

The blackness is purely amazing! Never before was another phone so black as this one. It's that black even black holes are jealous of the color of the iPhone 5G S!

But since black is just not a color, it's the absence of color and light, this is a paradoxical phone.

This is, because the iPhone IS light. It doesn't weigh much, so you can't tell it's heavy. Though it is still black. When it's not transparent. That is what makes it special.

This is the start of a new era. A phone of pure awesomeness. Black yet light, 5G capable, lightning fast (no thunderbolt because thunder is slower than lightning) and... and...

Wait whut? Is it just spam? Serious? Oh... I should have known...

That was pretty good. But the thing the majority of the world doesn't seem to know yet is that there are in fact man-made materials that are completely invisible to the eye, and I don't mean glass. I'm talking about a materiel that redirects light around it. It's pretty neat:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080811092450.htm

 

[RebeccaL]

The Adbobe one looks realistic.

But the iPhone scamers where quite lazy, transparent mockup . And for the second pic they didn't even bother to put a mocukup, that's a 4 in a boxwave keyboard case.

 

[kiljoy616]

After all these years incredible that they still fall for stuff like this.

 

[Slix]

People falling for this stuff is really lame, I mean, iPhone is mis-typed on the "Iphone turns black" (gotta admit, that's kinda funny).

Oh well, people will always fall for this stuff sometimes.

 

[Mike Oxard]

I got the Adobe one, the sender was Apple* which made me suspicious without even opening it. It also has along code in the subject. How did they get my email address or is it just a bulk mailing thing?

 

[*LTD*]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134b Safari/6533.18.5)

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134b Safari/6533.18.5)



Zzzz ....

Phishing is nothing new, and e-mails scams directed at Mac users are nothing new either.

Where's all the malware we've been promised every single year for the last decade? But NOW macs are popular. It'll be THIS year. They promise. Really. Honest.

Rinse, repeat. Each year.

Yup zzzzz..... Still have no idea how your responses are not treated as spam... They are just rinse, repeat ... Each and every thread. To be honest you might have been hacked for years now but due to your devotion all things Apple, would never accept it... Or even thought it was possible. Did it occur to you that not every malware is discovered or published on macrumors so you can rinse and repeat your comments.

When I got my first mac, there was nothing. So to have malware present... It blows!!!

If only there was enough Mac malware in the wild to substantiate your claims.

There just isn't.

The fact that I tell you you're wrong (when you are) isn't spam. The fact that I do it to posters other than you just indicates a lot of fallacy that gets my attention.

Once again, this is a phishing scam. It's not malware. They've been around for both Mac and PC platforms for years. This one got reported because it's got "iPhone 5" in the text and looks like a half-decent photoshop job.

Zzzz indeed. Nothing to see here.

 

[metsgiantsfan]

I received the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 email. Right away, there was no doubt in my mind this was a fake. First of all, it was sent to various email addresses which seem to be random. Then, I knew Apple would not be sending an email to its customers about Adobe products. Finally, the URLs on the email are linked to some http://wwwisis.ufg.edu.sv/virtual/img/index.php. Besides these things, this email was real legit!

 

[Eddyisgreat]

The Adbobe one looks realistic.

Eh. The subject line has this weird code in it, there's a typo in the "fin d a store" button, and the prices are low enough so that anyone with a legitimate use for CS would know that's way too far below retail price...even academic price...to be legit.

Simply scrolling to the bottom to see the weird address should tip off some red flags. This is a very horrible attempt imo. Do I think it would be ABSOLUTELY obvious to EVERYONE? no. But I think anyone who reads the email from top to bottom or better yet has seen a legit apple email will know right off the bat that something isn't right. An email from apple obviously will never have "cannon2trevoram@live.com" as the "from" email with "trudy2gisellafsdc@live.com; elladinetysvfapw@live.com; holcombalantxz@live.com; clivesparkswoqc@live.com; curranpenakqsd@live.com" CC'd, as does mine.

BTW this isn't malware. Its no different than me emailing you a link that says "CLICK NOW I BUY YOU APPLE SOFTWARE FOR 1 DOLLAR".

 

[ad2435]

If you're safe with your email address, you wouldn't recieve these email scams in the first place.

Just sayin.

 

[Doug Young]

The Fake Adobe email links to an entire site which is very convincing for those who might not care about design or for that matter, what it says in their address bar

The site has over 1500 pages (I downloaded it using SiteSucker just for kicks) and allows a user to select from a huge range of software (including Adobe, MS, Quark, VMWare etc) at bargain prices with a complete shopping cart where you can get scammed for your credit card (or perhaps get to download some virus laden turd)

The link to the phishing site is very similar to the following link and I am surprised it is still up almost a week after I received the email

http://kas*a*m*laka.gov.my/images/stories/food/index.php
(link has been changed to protect the innocent)

I vaguely remember Google warning when visiting a site that is suspected to be phishing (maybe they get flagged via dns?). If that is the case, what do we do to report these scams (I already reported it to Microsoft due to their stance on piracy, but perhaps this is not piracy so I am not sure they would do anything)

 

[ten-oak-druid]

Phishing has the potential to affect users of any OS. That has always been the case. As for this being specifically "phishing directed towards mac users", windows users have iphones too. And mac users could just as easily be taken in by phishing offers that have nothing to do with Apple products.

But the only malware here is a Windows executable. So lets drop the talk about viruses hitting macs now because their popularity has increased.

When I got my first mac, there was nothing. So to have malware present... It blows!!!

^I only see windows malware mentioned in this article. What mac malware are you talking about?

 

[Voidness]

Um...ATT has had MMS for a long time now.

I know But look at the disclaimers at the bottom of the fake iPhone 5GS e-mail: http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2011/05/malware.png

 

[toddybody]

An important thing to remember is that these emails are targeted at less informed consumers...not the type that grace MR.

 

[jclardy]

Just what I want to see while trying to read my phone screen: The back of my hand.

Translucent screens look cool in scifi movies but they don't serve much of a practical purpose.

Maybe in a tablet it would be useful so you can see where you are walking while walking around, but not so much in a phone.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

Well it's official, macs have become popular! I prefer the old world when scammers etc did not know what a mac was.... Sadly people who left PCs are going to get stung, due to apple marketing ( I'm a PC / mac ) for so long, people think they are safe.

Now for all you guys going on about that people who fall for this , deserve it cause it's soooo fake. Sorry but grow up! These emails are quite good to be honest , and people will for them. Sure you can be smug all you like that you can pick it as a fake etc... But go spend a day in the Apple store, then you might realise how bad this might play out on the average punter who ditched PCs to get away from it.

Time to pull the heads out of the sand and accept that Apple products are going to be targeted now that apple is growing at a huge rate. Time to ditch the macs are safe stereotype and proactively educate the users.

Lets think about this for a moment. How could someone be affected by the iphone 5 email?

Person on a PC gets an email for a deal on an iphone 5. The person clicks the link and goes to the site where personal information could be entered and collected. So far the danger is equal to all computer users regardless of OS. (Mac owners are not the only people interested in iphones). At the site, the person may decide not to enter information because it doesn't look right. Crisis averted. Except the only problem is that if you own a Windows PC, just clicking the link may have activated an executable that harmed the computer already.

This scenario is the same as it always was. Nothing new here.

Anyway Windows 7 is changing things right?

 

[mack pro]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

Please tell me MacRumors is joking & that this is real. I saw the email and gave them my Apple ID/password & voluntarily sent them the last 4 digits of my soc.

Uh oh.... I hope you're joking. The first thing a Windows owner learns is never open an email from someone you don't know. I thought that was common knowledge for mac owners. Malware is alot more common on windows than viruses these day and they can be a real bitch to get off your pc. It literally takes over your computer and trys to force you to buy their software. Malware is some really nasty****.

 

[aYzz]

If the attacker that made the Adobe Creative Suite email had made the price glossy black, it would look legit. Scary.

 

[marian99us]

these crazy phishing websites are also hitting Facebook bigtime!!
this spine chilling article is a must read...
Facebook and phishing

I mean where are we all going with this? when is it going to end?

 

[tablo13]

Haha, the "5" before GS looks so fake, like it was done on MS Paint. Those complaining about people falling for it, Facebook isn't EVEN close to this. From events, links posted on wall, comments, links sent via chat... scam/spam everywhere.

 

[devilstrider]

Transparent mode? Ya, ok...

lol Yeah man I can't believe people fall for that.

 

[arkmannj]

I don't really understand how the first one could trick anyone. You only need a very basic understanding of physics.

I understand what you're getting at, and can appreciate your perspective, but you know my parents and grandparents are already seeing things on a daily basis that amazes them and they never thought they'd see in their lifetime. The iPhone alone is amazing to them, that someone can have a phone, connect to email, get directions, store your journal, play games, buy music, but tickets to the symphony on the way there, take video, edit the video then share it with the world. So I think from there perspective they'd just be thinking "Oh wow, that looks like something our grandkids would be interested in" and then they might venture to check it out. They're all intelligent people, but not technology geeks, or anything so to them I could see that it may seem somewhat plausible and unfortunately I'm sure it's that kind of people that the scammers are preying on.