Spammers Exploit US Government Shutdown with a Series of Bogus Car Deal Emails

It does not take anyone with a high IQ to know that the US government shutdown is just bad for business. However, spammers and cybercrooks have taken this time to leverage the shutdown to exploit computer users through a series of emails advertising deals on cars.

The spam messages circulated by spammers are ones that claim the government shutdown not being a bad thing, and for each day the US shutdown remains, they will be offering half off on new 2013 cars. The email is rather clever, probably more intelligent than some people in congress as you would think at this point and time.

According to Symantec, who took notice to this spam campaign last week, the spam message contains a link pointing to a site that shows the fake half-off cars offer as demonstrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Scam email link redirected-site offering half off on 2013 vehicles during the US Government Shutdown - Source: Symantec

As far as any definitive reasoning behind this spam campaign, security experts have not found any. Although, that does not mean this spam campaign won't end up being a means for hackers to spread aggressive malware threats or even launch a phishing page off of the bogus email links asking for personal information. Basically, the malicious possibilities are virtually endless.

The exploitation of popular news events is an old pastime that hackers and cybercrooks are well known for conducting, mostly to spread malware or pilfer personal information from computer users. The latest exploitation of the US government shutdown may turn into an epidemic as other scammers root their own creative spamming campaigns or scams circulating around this unfortunate time in US history. If the government shutdown is not bad enough for many unfortunate people, you can always count on hackers to make matters worse.