Analysis by: Dhan Praga
As the disaster relief efforts in Japan continue to unfold, cybercriminals continuously take advantage of the unfortunate incident to push their malicious schemes. A sample email message was spotted with the email content asking for donations for the Japan earthquake victims. In the said mail, the sender poses as a Japanese man residing in Spain and claims of having established a distribution channel for the victims.

The mail does not have an attachment. However, it asks recipients for sensitive information such as their first name, last name, money transfer control number, country, and address. It also asks would-be donors to send their contributions to a particular address.

Users must remain wary of scams taking advantage of Japan earthquake incident as a social engineering hook. As in a previously reported scam, users should only coordinate with legitimate organizations or established relief distribution channels, should they wish to make a donation.

 SPAM BLOCKING DATE / TIME: March 18, 2011 GMT-8
 TMASE INFO
  • ENGINE:6.5
  • PATTERN:8020