Thoughts on A DHL Delivery which is nothing but Malware - Windows Users Warned of Attack / Email Management and Security

After having a look at the article, A DHL Delivery which is nothing but Malware - Windows Users Warned of Attack, it seems fairly apparent that email systems can come under attack from just about anything. If you aren't a skeptic about something that looks even remotely out of the ordinary, you can get burned. I believe in order to prevent people from falling for phishing attacks, they need to be enlightened to look for the signs of a harmful email.

When recipients received emails from a fake (but legitimate looking) DHL email that a package failed to deliver, recipients cant help but be curious what the email is about. Attached to the email was a link to a webpage or an attachment to a document. If any of the recipients had opened any of the contents within the email, their computers would have been infected with malicious software.

Users need to be cautious at all times, and its not good to be too trusting with emails. Anti-virus and other malware protection can give a false sense of security, and there is no such thing as absolute security.

If an email looks suspicious, its better to not trust it outright. You can Google to see if anyone else has received the email, and to find out the legitimacy of the email. You could go to the legitimate site of the 'supposed' email (not clicking on a link from a suspicious email, but Googling the site) to see if there is any news about it, talking to customer support or something. If you have knowledge with HTML you could have a look at the source code of the email, to try and find anything that looks out of place.

I believe the best advice I would give is to just be a skeptic at all times with your email. Whenever anything looks odd or out of place, go with your gut feeling and second guess an emails legitimacy. It's always better to be cautious, than to risk getting your computer infected with malicious software.

Blog by Hans Harvey

Blog Post 10

Sources-
Author: Graham Cluley
Title: A DHL Delivery which is nothing but Malware - Windows Users Warned of Attack
Address: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/03/20/dhl-delivery-malware/