Gmail and Hotmail spam that could break your PC or laptop just by opening it

Email users have been warned to be careful of spam emails which may contain dangerous malware. Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and other users might be exposed to spam emails that might break their Windows, PC with just one click. Dangerous malware on spam emails could steal sensitive personal and financial data and also steal credentials for Windows and banking services.

According to Express, security experts have said that hackers are taking advantage of a vulnerability that has not yet been patched by Microsoft to distribute the dangerous Qbot banking trojan. This malware was reportedly found in infected Word documents that are distributed via email. The Qbot malware also apparently allows malicious actors to deploy a backdoor to infected Windows machines and give remote access to ransomware gangs.

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This threat was highlighted by researchers from Proofpoint, the security firm’s Threat Insight Twitter account posting about the CVE-2022-30190 vulnerability. He said: “Proofpoint saw #TA570 exploit CVE-2022-30190 to deliver #Qbot malware. The actor uses thread-hacked messages with HTML attachments which, if opened, drops a zip archive.

“The archive contains an IMG with a Word document, a shortcut file and a DLL. The LNK will run the DLL to start Qbot. The document will load and run an HTML file containing PowerShell abusing CVE-2022-30190 used to download and run Qbot.”

Scammers can trick people into clicking on the infected attachment by sending fake invoices, banking and payment details, scanned documents or invoices. One scam even suggested that people had received a raise.

To protect yourself from these threats, you should not click on unsolicited emails from addresses you are not aware of, especially not on links or attachments in such messages. You can usually spot a scam by taking a closer look at a sender’s email address.

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