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

[charlituna]

... viruses and malware eh?

Oh wait--I'm on a mac

I was at one of the stores today and saw the new ipad signs. I couldn't help noticing that it every clearly said "Doesn't get PC viruses" (not no viruses, just not PC ones).

 

[GGJstudios]

I was at one of the stores today and saw the new ipad signs. I couldn't help noticing that it every clearly said "Doesn't get PC viruses" (not no viruses, just not PC ones).

It doesn't get Mac viruses, either, since none exist in the wild.

 

[Taeraresh]

I've gotten several emails purporting to be from Apple over the last week, most being fake confirmations and cancellations of Apple Store orders.

reportphishing@apple.com is the place to send any of the Apple ones.

 

[NAG]

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.

I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole. I am well aware that some people will completely accept that we have the technology for metal to become invisible even though they've never seen such a thing before (and I'll also blame the media and scientists for failing to explain discoveries correctly...although I mostly blame the media for requiring everything to be sensational/wrong).

So I'll disagree with the intelligence part. And no, I don't require knowing what the latest tech specs and jargon mean to be intelligent. I do require some processing of what they see every day and being able to apply that, though. That doesn't mean they're bad people. They're just intellectually lazy.

 

[CFreymarc]

Whoever falls for that *OBVIOUS* fake email kinda deserves it.

Totally agree. Super flat, transparent smart-phones only exist in CAD packages and concept shows. I'm sure some nanotechnology houses are dreaming to do stuff like this; it is not there for a few decades.

 

[charlituna]

I am a friction retard.

I believe there is a cream for that.

Then, I knew Apple would not be sending an email to its customers about Adobe products.

Sure they would. But that special price would be "with the purchase of a brand new Mac computer. At Apple Retail Stores and Apple Online Store only"

And they would mask all emails it was sent to.

 

[primmstereo]

"iPhone 5, now with Predator mode"

 

[NXTMIKE]

I receive the fake Adobe CS5 email in my mailbox on a biweekly basis almost.

no joke.

 

[Lord Appleseed]

"iPhone 5, now with Predator mode"

Gosh, will it turn invisible?

 

[ten-oak-druid]

Gosh, will it turn invisible?

Only Wonder Woman has an invisible iphone. It goes with her plane.

 

[SockRolid]

The only appropriate comment...

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"
- Dad - Nuke-'em' Commercial, "Robocop" (1987)

 

[nwassault]

As for the apple email, OS X's mail app highlights mail from Apple in blue as a default rule. Are these emails activating that rule and highlighting it blue?

No, the email is being sent from live.com addresses and is not being faked to make it look like it's from Apple, so the Mail rule isn't being activated. Gmail let the Adobe one slip through to my account and my bs detector went off, so I switched to my desktop and opened Mail. Mail, unlike Gmail, correctly marked it as spam.

 

[Fukui]

here's another phishing email

Wow, I was totally tricked by that one. I usually ignore those mails from apple anyways so didn’t click it, but that was at all out real looking.!Bizarre

 

[Adam-]

I love how amazing this is! its transparent, but you can't see the big 5 or apple logo when looking from the front! now thats thinking outside the box...so i ordered a boxfull of them

 

[Steve121178]

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)



I doubt my "reputation" in tech or as a Mac user is something I'd bother caring about.

That's because you haven't got one.

 

[jonnysods]

All the boasting about no viruses would catch up with us sooner or later...

Major drag.

 

[fpnc]

Got the one about the special on Adobe Creative Suite. Looks pretty convincing except that the from field says "Apple." (note the ending period) and the links all point to odd places, some are edu and others from windowslive. Looks like it was re-directed several times, maybe in order to try and hide the true origin.

As far as I can recall, this is one of the first phishing attacks that I've received (other than the oh-so-obvious Nigerian prince forms).

 

[programmasters]

simple

actually, it's quite easy, if it's to good to be true, it probably isn't true

 

[caspersoong]

Yep. The lousy design is the main factor I won't be tricked.