BANGALORE, INDIA: Just a few days left for Valentine’s Day, security firm Symantec has observed cybercriminals leveraging Valentine’s Day to snag unsuspecting individuals in their trap by using various techniques through social networking sites.

With India being the third-highest originator of spam globally, according to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report XVI, and email becoming a vehicle for spear phishing and targeted attacks, we must remember that just like love, spam can cross geographical barriers too!

“In fact, this is more insidious than traditional Valentine’s Day email spam, since it employs various information-stealing techniques through fake applications targeting this special day. Users are redirected to a survey site, where they are conned into revealing personal information. As social networks open their platforms to third-party developers, we have seen several instances of fake applications that leverage the large user base and trusted environments that these sites are perceived to be” said Abhijit Limaye, Director, Development, Symantec.

Some interesting subject lines that spammers are using:

Subject: Impossibly delicious berries from $19.99 - the PERFECT gift for Valentines Day!

Subject: Valentine's Day sweepstakes

Subject: Order Now!  Valentine's Day Flowers and Gifts from $19.99!

Subject: Seduce your Valentine with our most loving gifts

Subject: Valentine's Day Special Discount Offer - Flowers, Plants & Gifts

Subject: Buy 2 bottles, get one FREE

Subject: Be Different! Give yourself a Gift for Valentine's Day -- Get Thin with

Subject: Got Fat? Get Thin. Lose 30 pounds before Valentine's Day!

Dangers of clicking on spam links

Festive seasons have always provided cybercriminals with the perfect opportunity to make money, making the users vulnerable to engineered tricks where they are deceived into clicking on malicious links or giving away private information. This information can then be used to launch additional attacks, or steal sensitive bank account or credit card details. Even worse, cybercriminals are buying and selling the stolen information in the online underground economy.

Clicking on these links, sometimes also downloads an exe file which is a downloader, malicious software programs that download content from the web without the users permission. Symantec cautions users against opening any shortened links on micro-blogging and social networking sites. These are very commonly used by cybercriminals to fool users into thinking they are visiting a legitimate link, a Symantec release said.

According to a recent report released by ComScore, social networking accounted for nearly one in every five minutes spent online globally in October 2011, ranking as the most engaging online activity worldwide. Also, social networking sites now reach 82 percent of the world's Internet population age 15 years and older that accessed the Internet from a home or work computer, representing 1.2 billion users around the globe.

New techniques

As users of social networking sites discover new ways to share information and connect with friends, cyber criminals are innovating to abuse these avenues. For example, Symantec recently witnessed an instance of botmasters tweeting their commands to zombie computers, through smart phones. Symantec has detected a new Trojan botnet creator tool, called “TwitterNet Builder”. The threat, called Trojan.Twebot, uses a Twitter account to issue instructions to the Trojans created by the builder. When building Trojan.Twebot, the user is able to supply a public Twitter account for Trojan.Twebot to follow. Because Trojan.Twebot does not try to obfuscate commands on Twitter, it will not be difficult for Twitter security staff to find and close accounts abusing their service in this way.