Cyberspace fraudsters, in order to steal banking information and passwords, have been sending out a flurry of emails to lure victims into unwittingly installing spyware or malware into their computers. The emails offer false promises of providing access to videos of political or social scandals, and most recently of ‘Petrogate’ audios.
“Via spam, they use the name of a serious or well-known institution to disseminate information about a situation or the news, inviting people to watch a video by clicking (on a link),” Peru’s High-tech Crime Investigation Unit, or Divindat, warns on its website.
This process, also known as “phishing,” allows hackers to acquire sensitive information by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication, usually via email or instant messaging.
In this particular case, hackers are posing as Peruvian dailies including La República, Expreso and Correo, and are grabbing people’s attention with headlines such as “Alan García knew about Rómulo León’s shenanigans : see the video.”
One week ago, the Sunday night investigative TV news program, Cuarto Poder, broadcast audio recordings purportedly of Perupetro vice-president Alberto Quimper and Romulo Leon Alegria, a prominent member of Garcia’s ruling Aprista party, discussing under-the-table payments conditioned on Norwegian Discover Petroleum obtaining oil exploration and development concessions.
Dubbed ‘Petrogate’, the scandal led the government to suspend five joint exploration and development contracts recently awarded to state-owned oil company Petroperu and Discover, and forced García’s premier and entire cabinet to hand in their resignations.
“It’s important to be aware,” said the Chief of Divindat’s Fraud Division, Andres Astete. “When you receive emails from people you don’t know, you should immediately delete them because they are carrying trojans.”
Once a trojan is installed, a hacker can have access to all the files on a hard drive – including usernames, passwords and credit card details – or the computer’s email system.
