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Executives Stung By & #8201;’Subpoena’ & #8201; E-mail Scam

A bright yellow public notice on the home page of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California’s Web site is trying to clear up a little problem.

An e-mail scam targeted at executives and other high-profile individuals involved a fake subpoena from what appeared to be the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of California. (The court does not e-mail subpoenas.)

Each message included the executive’s name, company and phone number, and commanded recipients to testify before a grand jury. By clicking on an accompanying link , supposedly a copy of the subpoena to view and print , recipients got hit with a virus that shut down their computers only to record their keystrokes when turned back on.

“We’ve had a number of complaints that we’ve received not only here locally but nationally,” said Darrell Foxworth, a spokesman with the San Diego division of the FBI. Without specifying numbers, he said the agency is actively looking into it.

Phishing And Whaling

The e-mail attack is the latest “phishing” scheme, an attempt to fraudulently obtain sensitive information from a recipient’s computer by masquerading as a trusted source. This particular e-mail, called a “whaling” attempt because it targeted big fish in the electronic sea, contained a court case number, federal code, the court’s name and address, a court room number, issuing officers’ names and a replica of the court seal.

“In the last year or so, we’ve seen an increase in targeted attacks,” said Stephan Chenette, manager of the security labs at Websense Inc., a San Diego-based Internet filtering software company. “What’s unique is it looks much more legitimate than targeted attacks in the past.”

Phishing e-mails used to be easier to identify because of misspellings and requests for information using fewer personal touches, Chenette said.

“In this e-mail, they weren’t asking for any information, they were just serving a subpoena,” he said.

Chenette said the spammers had most likely purchased information from a database of chief executive officers containing various personal information.

As for Websense, the company whose job it is to filter advanced Internet threats, its own CEO received the e-mail, Chenette said, but was protected from visiting the link.

Others who receive the e-mail, from subpoena@uscourts.com, are advised to delete it without opening it. The FBI has directed recipients to file complaints at the Internet Crime Complaint Center www.ic3.gov.

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