| Payroll fraud alert used in phising scam |
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| Written by Adrie van der Luijt | |
| Friday, 11 January 2008 | |
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Infected emails that alert US employers to alleged payroll fraud have been distributed by Romanian cyber criminals, experts warn.
Websense Security Labs has discovered a new email attack that uses a spoofed email message which claims to be from the National Payroll Reporting Consortium (NPRC). The company said that the attack is similar to previous attacks claiming to originate from the IRS, Better Business Bureau and the Department of Justice. Misrepresentations The message claims that the recipient's company has made numerous misrepresentations regarding worker classification in an attempt to lower compensation costs. The email asks the recipient to fill out an attached form and fax it to NPRC's fraud department in order to resolve the issue. The messages look legitimate, appear to come from the NPRC and even carry the NPRC banner. “Employment tax fraud is a growing concern and represents a large portion of the nation’s tax gap. Evading employment taxes can have serious consequences for employers and the employees,” according to the email message. The email comes with an attachment that contains a Trojan virus that can gain access to the recipient’s computer system and forward data to the crime ring behind the scam. Success rate Three criminal groups are thought to be behind 50 to 70 attacks that target email accounts with legitimate looking messages purported to come from banks, building societies and other official corporate and government organisations in a practice known as ‘phising’. Web security experts believe that the success rate of the campaigns, in which infected messages are sent out in batches of 1,000 to 10,000 at a time, is around 20 to 30 per cent. Websense and the NPRC advised anyone receiving the emails to delete them immediately without opening them or clicking on links contained in the messages. Related articles
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