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June 20, 2011

Fast food giant McDonald's is the latest brand to be abused by malware distributors. How does a crook (not the Hamburglar) trick everyday folks into infecting their systems? By sending out malware delivery email spam like the following:

From: McDonalds Restaurants
Subject: Today you will get the ticket and there will be no need to pay for your dishes

Hello.

McDonalds invites you to The Free Dinner Day which will take place on 27 June, 2011, in every cafe of ours.

Free Day’s menu!
- Premium Crispy Chicken Classic Sandwich
- World Famous Fries
- Premium Southwest Salad with Crispy Chicken
- McFlurry with OREO® Cookies
- McCafe Hot Chocolate

Print the invitation card attached to the letter and show it at the cash desk of any of our restaurants.

Every manager will gladly take your card and issue you a tasty dish of Free Day.
And remember! Free Day is whole five free dishes!

Thank you for your credence.
We really appreciate it.

Yes, it's not particularly good English, but hungry recipients hooked on McDonald's french fries will probably skip over that when they see the list of "free" items.

The attachment in the message I saw was named Invitation_Card_07902.zip. I suspect other instances will have different numbers (randomized) in the file name. At the moment, it has light anti-virus detection, according to VirusTotal (only 19%).

At the risk of resurrecting an old ad campaign, give yourself a break today, and delete the message without opening the attachment.