Skype Voucher Bargain Hunters Get Malware Instead of Discounts

Most scammers are opportunistic. What many of them do is observe the latest trends, choose one to build a scam about, and take advantage of the sometimes gullible and often bargain hungry people who flock to their cons and fall prey to them.

These scams range from fake work-at-home job offers to made-up listings to non-existent discount coupons or vouchers for popular online services. An example of the latter con is the Skype discount voucher scam, where a fake website offering such fraudulent coupons was set up to gather personal information and serve up client-side exploits and malware.

The website in question is skypevouchers(dot)com. If you've ever scoured the web for deals on Skype services, visited the site, and clicked on to get vouchers from them, then we recommend you run your anti-virus software as soon as possible and have your device checked for malware if you find anything suspicious.

For those who have heard of the site or were planning to buy some vouchers from there, then it's best that you block access to the site and inform friends and family about the scam that they're running.

This information was released by GFI Labs, as the firm has discovered that the domain is currently serving client-side exploits and malware to its site visitors. The malware is served through a small iFrame tag that loads the legitimate manjakuhappy(dot)com website, which was compromised to take part in the scam.

The domain is serving CVE-2011-3544, with the following MD5's corresponding the exploits served at the site:

MD5: d3f933524c85c96a76f7ffd516d335c0 served from halloffam(dot)bee(dot)pl

MD5: 58db6e6e25d9b8e4742f2ef9b43c3818 served from themettco(dot)bee(dot)pl

Next time you happen to find a site offering deals that are too good to be true, check out it's legitimacy first and block the site if you find anything fishy.

Article by Hazel Chua
Gigadgetry: Cool Gadgets, Tech News, Quirky Devices