The Spam Cryer

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Email Scam

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July 25th, 2008

Be wary of any email that claims to come from U.S. Customs and Border Protection as there are reports of an attack circulating via bogus email messages that claim to be from “US Customs Service.”

The subject line may say “Parcel requires declaration”and with the body of the email indicating that a parcel has been received addressed to you. The message may also encourage you to open an email attachment which may contain malicious code.

US-CERT suggests that you to do the following to help mitigate the risks:

• Review the alert posted by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection regarding this issue.
• Do not open attachments contained in unsolicited email messages.
• Refer to the Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams (pdf) document for more information on avoiding email scams.
• Refer to the Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks document for more information on social engineering attacks.
• Install anti-virus software and keep virus signature files up to date.

For Further Information Go To::

• http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-014.html
• http://www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/alerts/email_virus.xml
• http://www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/emailscams_0905.pdf

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The official US CERT alert is available by going to: http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.html#u_s_customs_and_border

Here are a few other blog articles on the subject:

US Customs Service Spam - We have caught two samples of the new circulating spam attack disguised as “US Customs Service” messages. This spam attempts to lure users to open an attached file with an information stealing Trojan inside. The messages tell the user … Malware Spam Attack Disguised As US Customs and Border Protection … - After recent malware emails disguised as UPS and tax messages, there is a new attack circulating via bogus email messages and claims to be from “US Customs Service.” The messages may contain the following subject lines: Customs – We …

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