In more unusual news some US government agencies have reportedly been receiving ‘phishing letters’ by snail mail. The package is said to include malware-laden compact discs (CDs) which are being sent from China.
According to the non-public alert shared with the state and local government the packages are arriving in a Chinese postmarked envelope which included a confusingly worded typed letter with the occasional Chinese language character thrown in for good measure.
The existence of the envelopes came to light through the non-public alert issued by the Multi-State Center for the Distribution and Analysis of Information (MS-ISAC), a system for the monitoring and prevention of cyber attacks to government agencies.
The MS-ISAC has given out the preliminary analysis of the disk that shows a Microsoft Word Document that has malicious Visual Basic scrips. The State Department of Cultural Affairs has received the letters specifically addressed to them. The MS-IAC has also said that it is not completely sure that if any of these governments organizations would have been tricked into inserting the disks into an official government terminal.
Cyber attacks using postal mail or other non-virtual means are almost non-existent in todays world but that they do still happen, those who construct them take advantage of the general notion that hacking is done only through email and other virtual methods.
As advice to guard against hacking the safest thing is not to install anything that you have not actively sought. In this case you would expect that no-one would be taken in by this low-tech highly suspect scam but we’ll have to see whether this story develops any further.
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