Oh--note also that some anti-malware software failed to protect Windows machines from this infection.
So, there is today's learned the hard way by someone else lesson. We shall consider ourselves lucky.
Mark_
11:57 16 January 2012
16 January 2012
Linkedin Spam
A day or so ago I began receiving contacts from people on the social-networking service Linkedin (to which I do not subscribe). The first few wanted to use my picture, or somethingsomething, but today's got my attention to a higher degree: "Please stop spamming me with links to your business!" Because this suggests that one's e-mail address has been hijacked (if not one's actual computer), I looked around for information. (Google: "linkedin spam".) Some of what Google found goes back to 2010 (or beyond).
I found several references to (this) new activity, including this from PCWorld: "Warning: Fake LinkedIn Spam Can Steal Your Bank Passwords". The spam came to my Apple eddress, which others have noticed: Is anyone else receiving LinkedIn spam...: Apple Support Communities. We hope Apple's mail servers or the MobileMe system have not been hacked. (Fairly scary thought.)
What isn't clear yet is whether the malware it installs can run on Macintosh; in the past, the bulk of this kind of thing was OS-specific (and therefore targeted only Windows). There are a couple of classes of code that can run on (virtually) any OS, though, so we'll be very careful not to click any links on such e-mails--not even on the unsubscribe (or in this case the "adjust...settings") links, which can lead to places you wouldn't want your browser to go.
In fact, it is a general rule that one should never unsubscribe using the link provided on an unwanted e-mail. Even if it seems to have come from a trusted source, a safer practice would be to use the unsubscribe link found on the source's own web site.
