If you’re a rock-and-roll star, anticipating the imminent arrival of a new recording contract from your lawyer, you can stop reading this post. If you’re not, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, it was not your hours of practice playing Rock Band, or singing in the shower, that attracted the attention of the music industry. A spammed message, supposedly from a record company, which claims to have a contract attached, is (surprise!) malicious.
The contract, in this case, is no contract at all, but a Trojan that can brick your computer if you run the file inside the Zip archive attached to the message.
We’ve been watching our favorite spam-propagated malware, Trojan-Downloader-Tacticlol (aka Oficla, Sasfis, Fregee, or Losabel). This is its new, extra stupid come-on of the moment. The message appears to come from Rock Out Records and says, in part:
“We have prepared a contract and added the paragraphs that you wanted to see in it. Our lawyers made alterations on the last page. If you agree with all the provisions we are ready to make the payment on Friday for the first consignment. We are enclosing the file with the prepared contract.”
In our tests of the Trojan, it pulls down a number of malicious payloads, some of which modify key Windows files responsible for the operation of the computer. As a consequence of the infection, your computer may not be able to boot up, instead leaving you stuck with a blue screen of despair.