BitDefender, vendor for data security and anti-virus software, announced on March 17, 2008 that its anti-spam specialists have found spammers of Nigerian scam e-mails to use Google Calendar, a new passage to attack the corporate.

BitDefender, vendor for data security and anti-virus software, announced on March 17, 2008 that its anti-spam specialists have found spammers of Nigerian scam e-mails to use Google Calendar, a new passage to attack the corporate.

These scammers are targeting large enterprises with their spam mails to hook potential victims onto Google Calendar invites. The messages address the companies by their name and send a unique link to individual recipients making filtering of URLs harder.

Nigerian scam or the 419 Fraud involves an uninvited e-mail purporting to be from Nigeria or other African country. The scam typically informs the recipient that he has inherited or is entitled to a huge sum of money usually from an unexpected source.

The e-mail then tells its recipient that in order to get the money, he needs to pay a processing fee in advance, alternatively provide his credit card, bank account or other identifying details. The e-mail also instructs the recipient to obtain the payment so that the delivery process of the mentioned amount is set up. Notification has been issued to Google support to obstruct the scam accounts.

Bogdan Dumitru, CTO, BitDefender, said the recent technique uses a new social engineering trick. These spam mails are being sent in massive bulk seems somewhat odd. The process usually involves a phase for testing to assess the rate of response. Normally, when the test is over and some techniques prove to be ineffective they are discarded forever, as reported by HNS on March 18, 2008.

According to the researchers, the persistency of the Nigerian scammers seems to have no limits. But, some consumers frustrated with the scams are retorting by replying to the scam e-mails with false leads to the criminals. However, the scammers have succeeded to defraud even these fraud fighters.

Further, with the rapid growth in e-mail scams from Nigeria, police all over the world have been alerted about the attacks and several arrests have followed. According to recent news, during early March 2008, nine Nigerians were sent to prison in Ghana because they faked e-mails to extort $185,000 from a Frenchman.