Spammers impersonate WhatsApp to infect your machine

Spammers are constantly looking for new ways to deceive people and in this week's Spam Saturday we take note of the thousands of messages attempting to piggyback off of “WhatsApp”.

Mobile phones do a lot more than make calls. They are small, but powerful computers capable of doing practically anything traditionally handled by a desktop or laptop. Mobile device use continues to grow and become more sophisticated. As it does, spammers have more incentive and will find more ways to exploit it. In this example they are targeting people interested in the very popular “WhatsApp“, which sends messages across platforms without charging texting fees. Spam campaigns appearing to originate from this app try capture a person's interest and entice them into clicking the “Play” button. At that point the malicious email infects the host computer and redirects to a spam website.

Spam and malware attacks like these will only increase along with mobile usage. “WhatsApp” is one of millions of applications that a hacker might try to impersonate and vigilance is a necessity.

The Barracuda Email Security Service and Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall protect customers from this attack. Get more information at our corporate site.

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