Fake Email from Northwest Airlines Contains Trojans

Yet another email scam is on the rounds to deceive oblivious Internet users. Only this time, the email wasn’t “sent” by a lottery commission or a financial institution. The fraudulent email that is currently invading the inboxes of frequent fliers is allegedly from the travel office of Northwest, a major airline in the United States.

Thanking the customer for the purchase

Many Northwest Airlines customers have already alerted the authorities about the fake email. The investigators discovered that the fake email had been actually sent to all Northwest Airlines customers who were using the airline’s online booking system at its official website. In fact, the message in the fake email even starts with a “thank you” to the email recipient for participating in the airline’s “Buy Northwest Airlines Ticket Online” promotion. To make it seem even more believable, the fake email was even signed by an alleged Northwest Airlines employee.

Downloading the virus into the computer

Unlike most email scams, the Northwest Airlines email scam is not meant to phish out credit details and personal information from unknowing email recipients. The main objective of the original senders of the fraudulent email is simple: to get other people to activate the attached Trojan. The Trojan attachment, which is disguised as a .zip file containing the invoice for the ticket and credit card charge, is very harmful not only to the email account but also to the computer system. In fact, it traces the keystrokes inputted into the infected personal computer and sends all useful information to a particular server whose origin was traced back to Russia.