'Medicare' Email Virus

The ‘Medicare’ Email tactic is a new online con that targets innocent users. Users who have been targeted by the ‘Medicare’ Email tactic report to have received an email that claims to originate from the publicly-funded healthcare insurance scheme of Australia. The goal of the bogus message is to trick users into installing a Trojan on their system. The ‘Medicare’ Email tactic appears to be going after Australia users mainly for the moment. However, it is likely that the authors of this tactic may alter the contents of the fake emails in the future to target other regions of the world.

The users who receive an email from the fraudsters behind the ‘Medicare’ Email con would be greeted by a message that carries the logo of the Australian ‘Medicare.’ The bogus message would claim that to review some crucial information regarding their health insurance, the user needs to review the attached file. The attached files may be named differently – ‘Medicare – 4893277056.xls,’ ‘Medicare – 7623016722.xls,’ etc. If the users try to open the attached spreadsheet, they will see a prompt that asks them to click on the ‘Enable Content’ button if they want to review the document. However, the goal is to exploit a known vulnerability in the Microsoft Office service. If this is successful, the attackers would be able to plant the Ursnif Banking Trojan on the compromised system. This threat would enable the attackers to acquire the banking details of the user and other sensitive data.

Be very careful when reviewing emails or opening attachments as many cybercriminals are using this as an infection vector to propagate various threats. Make sure your computer is protected by a genuine anti-virus application and do not forget to update all the software present on your computer regularly.