Beware the Fake Parking Ticket Malware Scam

It’s truly amazing the lengths to which nefarious hackers will go to install malware on your computer.

This little scheme is actually quite cunning.  It seems like a particularly evil twist to offline affiliate marketing.

Now, someone appears to be combining malware distribution with one of life’s necessary evils: parking tickets.

SANS Institute researcher Lenny Zeltser recently discovered this two-step parking ticket/malware scam.

The basic gist is this: someone places a fake parking ticket on your car (this is happening in North Dakota mainly) informing you that you have violated a particular law.

The ticket instructs you to go to a web site to get the specific details on your infraction.

You guessed it.  You go to the website and, of course, it tells you to download a “special program” to see the pictures of your car and how it was “in violation”.   BOOM.  Hello, malware.

Researchers at McAfee have highlighted the scheme.

“Attackers continue to come up with creative ways of tricking potential victims into installing malicious software. Merging physical and virtual worlds via objects that point to Web sites is one way to do this. I imagine we’ll be seeing such approaches more often,” Zeltser said.

This is crazy on many levels.  For one thing, you are being told to go directly to a website from what seems to be an authority figure.  No one would likely suspect a thing until it was too late.

For another, this means that the people spreading this trash must be in VERY close proximity to their victims.  Most of the time, it’s nice to assume that this junk somehow filters in from overseas.

Well, guess what.  They are right in your neighborhood placing phony a parking ticket on your car.

So, before you head over to ParkingTicket.com and try to fight your newly imposed penalty, be forewarned.

Keep your guard up.  Trust no one.  It’s pessimistic, I know, but also necessary these days.