UPS spam and protecting yourself from it- a quick lesson

Saar here, resident engineer at Myriad Supply.

“The courier company was not able to deliver your parcel by your address. Cause: Error in shpping address. You may pickup the parcel at our post office. Please attention! For mode details and shipping label please see the attached file. Print this label to get this package at our post office. Please do not reply to this email, it is an unmonitored mailbox!”

Does this sound familiar? Maybe with a zip file attached to the email? How should you and your company protect yourself from this type of spam?

When emails get sent around the world, the syntax they use is “HELLO”. You can see them in the headers, for example:

The sender is from a .RU, meaning from Russia (Helo=xibymcdsdrere.ru). Last I heard, UPS was headquartered in the USA. Based on that, you can safely trash this email.

How to protect yourself and your company:
1) Be sure to make sure you know what you are opening before opening any attachments.
2) If you are unsure or if something looks suspicious, ask your company’s tech department if possible.
3) If it contains a ZIP file, chances are that it’s a virus. Spammers will wrap viruses in ZIP covers so firewalls won’t scan them.

I remember when we all had a day off because someone opened a spam UPS attachment and crashed the network. Personally, I thought that was great, but I see why not everyone may think so…

For more information on anti-spam and anti-virus for your firewalls, check out http://www.myriadsupply.com/. We can tell you about hardware firewalls, almost all of them offering a subscription license, and about dedicated appliances, that can do the same thing.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Saar Harel is a resident Engineer at Myriad Supply, and has been in the Networking Field for over 20 years. You can check out his Google+ and ask him questions!