Just a few days ago we have received a notification from the Spanish electricity company called Endesa, in which we were warned about a new online fraud that infects victims via fake emails. Cyber criminals sent false bills to Spanish users on behalf of the company Endesa, after opening an emails users were attacked by ransomware. Unfortunately, cyber criminals were able to successfully launch their attacks, and even continue them in other countries. Now it is very difficult to estimate the number of people who have received such “fake bills”, and the number of those who became victim of this attacks.
Over the last few days, new target of attacks was found. It was a state electricity company of Poland called PGE. Customers of this company were getting the same emails with fraud invoice and ransomware in attachment. Same as in the Spanish case, the criminals also infect and important and sensitive information which belongs to home and business users, after the infected file is opened, which is supposed to be the invoice for electricity (which becomes too expensive for the user).
What we are facing is the massive frauds that cross national borders and have a very profitable purpose – to force user to pay a ransom in order to return an access to user’s personal files.
In Spain and in Poland, the attack worked identically. Cyber criminals were sending false invoices allegedly on behalf of the known electricity company with an objective to infect naïve user’s computers with Cryptolocker Locky. Although this attack is reached only Spain and Poland, it spreads rapidly and may soon be in any other country in the world. Here are some tips to help to protect yourself against this threat:
Every day, the cyber criminals are learning something new and trying to perform more individual and sharpened to a specific user attacks. They manage to successfully carry out their attacks, using the names of well-known and reliable companies, and as a result people are easily falling into the trap.
One thing is clear: if you are not protected from this type of ransomware, you are risking to lose your personal and corporate files during one of those attacks.
Just great! This is a very helpful guide 🙂 – Mikael Virtanen
Excellent information that worked! Thank you very much – Dieter Friedman
This was fast, easy and found all of malware! Thanks a million! – Kiera Byrne
Just awesome, no more words needed – Tyler Smith