Fake Microsoft update emails circulating

Stephen Withers
Monday, 07 December 2009 11:23

Business IT - Security

Don't be fooled: Microsoft isn't going to offer you "an experimental private version" of a Windows update, whatever the email says.

Security vendor Sophos has warned of a spammed malware campaign masquerading as a security update for various versions of Windows.

Addressed "Dear Microsoft Customer," the email claims distribution of the update via Microsoft's web site "would have result in efficient creation of a malicious software" [sic].

According to SophosLabs' Vanja Svajcer, the file is actually "a Delphi executable packed using a custom packer but it seems to be malformed and caused errors while executing on my test system."

The file was already detectable by Sophos' AV software as EncPK-LL and so Svajcer performed no further analysis.

Anyway, December's Patch Tuesday is almost here, so wait a little longer and you'll be able to get the latest Windows and Office security updates directly from Microsoft.