Would you be surprised if you opened your email one day to see "US Army invaded Iran'?
In September of 2007, a French Weekly newspaper, Le Canard Enchaîné, known for their investigative journalism, headlined with "A report sent to the Elysée — Putin tells Tehran: They're going to bomb you!"
The New York Sun, reporting about that French headline, titles their piece with "Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent."
February of 2007, The NewStatesman said, "American military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be implemented any day."
January 2007, Centre for Research on Globalization warns, "Iran Must Get Ready to Repel a Nuclear Attack."
These imminent dire warnings go all the way back to at least 2004, where the Lebanon Wire was reporting that Bush's October of 2004 "surprise" before his re-election was going to be.... yes, an imminent attack against Iran.
With each and every news report declaring war with Iran was imminent, there came the continuing speculation throughout the Internet, echoing those reports.
The latest of those reports came from AsiaTimes, declaring that "Bush 'plans Iran air strike by August'".
With these dire warnings of an imminent attack on Iran, year after year coming to your email and shown in many country's media, would it surprise you in the least to open your email one morning to see emails declaring "Negotiations between the US and Iran end in war" or US Army invaded Iran" or even "World War III has already begun"?
You open that email quickly and you see the news and then you see a video of the initial attack on Iran, taken by a US soldier.
Text:
“Just now US Army’s Delta Force and U.S. Air Force have invaded Iran. Approximately 20000 soldiers crossed the border into Iran and broke down the Iran’s Army resistance. The video made by US soldier was received today morning. Click on the video to see first minutes of the beginning of the World War III. God save us.”
Do you click that video? Do you even want to see? Is it like a trainwreck, you do not want to see the damage but you cannot help but look.
If you answered yes to any of the above questions.... you would have downloaded a Trojan infecting your computer with a malicious code.
This is the newest element to Storm Worm's spam campaign.
The campaign before that was the 4th of July alert, which used a different message to get you to open the emails, but with the same outcome. Downloading malicious code onto your computer.
This campaign using Iran in a socially-engineered message, would be more likely to work because they are using the consistent drumbeat about war with Iran to bypass the skepticism from those that generally would be cautious in opening emails from people they do not know.
The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, (US-CERT) gives a list of potential subject lines, which can change at any time. They include the following:
* 20000 US soldiers in Iran
* Iran USA conflict developed into war
* More than 10000 Iranians were murdered
* Negotiations between USA and Iran ended in War
* Occupation of Iran
* Plans for Iran attack began
* The Iran's Leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Jihad to USA
* The World War III has already begun
* The beginning of The World War III
* The military operation in Iran has begun
* The secret war against Iran
* Third War in Iran
* Third World War has begun
* US Army crossed Iran's borders
* US Army invaded Iran
* US army is about 20 kilometers from Tegeran
* US soldiers occupied Iran
* USA attacked Iran
* USA declares war on Iran
* USA occupied Iran
* USA unleashed war on Iran
* War between USA&Iran
* War with Iran is the reality now
* Washington prefers to shoot first
The advice given is to not follow unsolicited links in email messages and make sure you have virus protection on your computer and that it is up-to-date.
They also offer a PDF file for people to refer to, called "Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams" and another one called "Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks".
Major events that happen in America would be on every news channel as well as in every major newspaper, so when someone receives an email with breaking news that they are not seeing anywhere else, it would be smart to delete it without opening.
(Cross posted this from a piece I wrote for Digital Journal- H/T David)
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