Top Valentine’s Day security threats...

Valentine’s Day is here, and with it comes a lot of last minute online shopping deals.

It has been proven that the day of Saint Valentine and the weeks leading up to it is a goldmine for cybercriminals.

As online shopping becomes more and more popular, there are more and more scams out there than become chronic around special occasions.

While threats disguised as offers and deals are nothing new, people searching online for last minute bargains may get a bit trigger happy when it comes to clicking on links to special deals.

It’s not only those annoying survey scams that open up when you click on “free” offers. Some attachments or links are actually malicious files that attack your computer system. Malware threats also arrive during this season; take for example this attack targeting users looking for a romantic dinner:

The attachment is actually a malicious .RTF file (detected as TROJ_ARTIEF.VDY) , which opens the decoy dinner menu but also uses a vulnerability (CVE-2012-0158) to drop a backdoor onto the affected system.

It’s the same old advice – be wary when opening emails and clicking links from unknown sources.

It’s a good idea to get a protection programme that blocks spam mail as well as related URLs and malware.

Remember, If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.