February is a short month, but not too short for spam events to make an impact. Valentine's Day and its associated threats has passed, so now it is time for International Women's Day—celebrated on March 8 every year. This is a great occasion to express love, respect, and kindness toward women and spammers will always attempt to take advantage of these events. The following is a spam campaign we have observed targeting International Women’s Day with a fake product promotion.
Often, spam originating from Russia will attack targets using online marketing promotions with odd phone numbers. Here, spammers targeted users by providing fake offers for great gifts for Valentine’s and International Women’s Day and also some peculiar phone numbers are provided for ordering a gift certificate.
The following is an example of the Russian spam observed by Symantec:
The spam can be identified by the subject line:
Subject: Лучший подарок на 14 февраля и 8 марта
The translation is "Best gift for 14 Feb. and 8 March".
In some other spam samples, spammers have enticed targets with health products for women. The following email subject have been observed in this attack:
Subject: Body and Soul women's weight lossSubject: Workouts for WomenSubject: Women try to balance fitness, safety
Symantec advises our readers to be cautious with unsolicited or unexpected emails, and to not be fooled by fake gift and product offers. We at Symantec are monitoring spam attacks around the clock to ensure that readers are kept up to date with information on the latest threats.
And have a happy International Women’s Day.