Spectre and Meltdown - Criminals take advantage in Germany
Recent news from Malwarebytes is advising that a German email has been circulating purporting to be from the German Federal Office for Information Security , with a valid SSL certificate for the website that is linked in the email, all look legitimate.However, once you visit the site, and download the zip file, inside is a file named intel, which adds to its credibility, but once the intel.exe file is run, it installs a trojan (Smoke Loader) and starts downloading and uploading encrypted data to external servers.
While this website has now been taken down by the hosting providers, there will undoubtably be further emails circulating that will try to take advantage of people wanting to download patches. So whether you are an Accountant in Andover, a Barrister in Basingstoke, or a Loan Officer in London, ensure you download the patches from the microsoft.com domain, or the apple.com domains.
For a list of the updates that are currently available, visit the tnova.uk/sandmpatches page and you’ll see the hotfix numbers that you can search the MS website from.
