CXOs face malware email attacks

ZDNet reports that sev­eral hun­dred CXOs are receiv­ing a new kind of email attack. Mes­sages con­tainin Word doc­u­ments that include an exe­cutable file. If the recip­i­ent clicks on the file, it runs a zero-day exploit on the victim’s computer.

Accord­ing to Mes­sage­Labs, the recip­i­ents tend to be CXOs as follows:

• 30% chief invest­ment officers
• 11% chief exec­u­tive officers
• 6% chief finan­cial officers

The tar­gets are tech­ni­cally inex­pe­ri­enced vic­tims whose com­put­ers may hold inter­est­ing per­sonal or cor­po­rate data. Attack­ers find the vic­tims names through search engines and social net­work­ing sites. I’m guess­ing that LinkedIn is one of these sites.

Tagged as: ceo, CIO, cxo, email, Google, linkedin, Microsoft, network, office, security, social, software, spam, USA, usability