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February 09, 2012

As I started to read the following spam, I quickly categorized it as yet another atrociously spelled and constructed Bank of America phishing scam.

But then came the last sentence before the link:

From: Bank of America
Subject: Important Security Issue

Your Online Banking is Blocked

Because of unusual number of invalid login attempts on you account, we had to believe that, their might be some security problem on you account.

So we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your account security.

Please click on continue to the verification process and ensure your account security. It is all about your security.
Thank you. Open In Internet Explorer Only.

Continue To Online Banking

The actual link URL is to a hijacked Indian web site, where the page uses the ancient meta-refresh tag to send visitors to a different hijacked Indian web site, where a phony BofA page awaits. Whether this email is simply to attract phishing victims or load some malware through Internet Explorer (there are some suspicious external JavaScript files loaded into the destination page) should not concern typical users. But avoiding even clicking on the link in the first place should be Issue Number One.

If you ever receive (and read) an email claiming that your account (of whatever kind) has been blocked, use your trusty bookmark to that site and log in the normal way. There you'll find that your account is just fine.