Sochi Olympics Spam Advertises Watches

The Olympics is the biggest sporting event where thousands of athletes from all over the world compete for athletic supremacy, with more than 200 countries participating in said event. This year's Winter Olympics, set in Sochi, Russia, is no different. As such, it is no wonder that millions of people would watch and listen to the games in support of their country. No wonder too, that cybercriminals would choose to take advantage of the event for their own malicious purposes.

We have seen several spam emails leveraging the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi as a lure for unsuspecting victims. One particular mail we spotted is a commercial spam promoting watch replicas. The mail contains an image showing samples of watch replicas. Besides that, the body of the mail contains text relating to the sporting event. No URL appears to be present in the mail at first, but upon analysis we discovered that a URL is embedded in the actual image, which when accessed does lead to a website selling fake watches.

Users are once more reminded to always be vigilant in regards to suspicious emails finding they way to inboxes, especially before, during and after major events like the Olympics. Cybercriminals will always take advantage of what is currently capturing the public's attention for their malicious schemes, in an attempt to make them appear legitimate and even tempting. Never open mails such as these, especially when they come from unfamiliar senders. Simply delete them outright instead.

All elements related to this spam campaign is detected and blocked by the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™.

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