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Red Condor Warns of New Virus Disguised as Response to craigslist "Car for Sale" Ad
Currently Undetected Virus Appears as a Response to craigslist Ad With Link to Fake "Picasa" Photo Album
| Source: Red Condor, Inc.
ROHNERT PARK, CA--(Marketwire - August 13, 2009) - Email security experts at Red Condor are warning email users
about a new virus currently undetected by most virus scanners. The virus is
embedded in an email that appears to be a response to a craigslist
advertisement. The email containing the virus, which was detected August
12, 2009 by Red Condor's Zero Minute Defense
Network, includes the subject line, "Re: Car For Sale on craigslist."
The email content suggests that the user requested pictures for a car being
sold on craigslist and invites the recipient to view the images in a Picasa
album. Clicking on the link to the album installs a virus.
"Only 13 out of 41 virus scanners detected the file as a virus when Red
Condor first identified it," stated Dr. Tom Steding, chief executive
officer of Red Condor. "This means
that if the message was delivered and a user clicked on the link, they'd
likely be infected even if they had an anti-virus program running on their
desktop computer. With increasingly more ways to get malicious content onto
computers and corporate networks, it is important that companies' security
solutions are capable of responding quickly and appropriately to eliminate
potential threats. Traditional signature-based virus engines are simply not
enough protection against today's spammers and cybercriminals. After all,
it only takes one click."
The virus scam was detected by Red Condor's proprietary Spam Trip Wire
technology. Red Condor scanned the virus payload through VirusTotal.com,
and also Jotti, and the email virus was unrecognized by more than
two-thirds of commercial virus scanners.
Spam Trip Wire identifies spam and virus campaigns before they
penetrate users' networks. Suspicious campaigns are put on probation until
a filter rule can be written to capture messages from the campaign. During
the probationary period, messages from the suspicious campaign are
quarantined. Red Condor charts the number of malicious campaigns identified
by Spam Trip Wire through its online Threat Center at
RedCondor.com.
About Red Condor
Red Condor is revolutionizing spam fighting with its next generation
technology. Red Condor's highly accurate email filter, hybrid architecture
Vx Technology™, and fully managed
appliances lead to a dramatic reduction in the cost of owning a premium
spam filter.
With solutions for small business, as
well as ISPs with millions of email inboxes, Red Condor has a
cost-effective, timesaving solution that is rapidly gaining market share.
The system's design has built-in zero tolerance for lost email, and a near
zero false positive rate while achieving long-term spam block rates greater
than 99%. This next-generation technology is backed by a 24x7 customer care
center staffed by email security experts at Red Condor's headquarters. For
more information, visit www.redcondor.com.