At the moment there are a lot of fake warning mails in circulation in the name of real lawyers. The messages contain links to websites that are most likely designed to harvest personal information such as access data. However, a distribution of Trojans could also take place.
The State Criminal Police Office (LKA) of Lower Saxony warns against such mails in a current message. They explicitly point out that the addresses of real lawyers and law firms given as senders are not the authors of the mails.
News says receivers should refrain from using protected movies and protected music. The following is a sum to be paid immediately. To get more information about the case and initiate payment, victims should click on links in the mail. What’s behind the URLs is currently unclear, as the LKA says many sites are already offline.
Well-crafted phishing mails
At first sight the mails seem convincing. Sender name, subject, signature and text look legitimate. But only at first glance: If you take a closer look at the sender’s address, you will see that it has nothing to do with the alleged sender. Who gets such a mail, should in no case click on contained links. By the way, this is generally true when reading mails. In addition, one should not open file attachments without thinking. The latter is still one of the most common ways of infection in many cases.
According to the LKA, some lawyers are already warning about the scam on their websites and distancing themselves from the spam mails. The extent to which these mails are currently circulating is still unclear at this point in time.