F-Secure’s email addresses are being misused Helsinki, Finland - February 1, 2006 On Wednesday the 1st of February, an unknown attacker sent out thousands of infected emails. These emails were crafted so that they appeared to be from a non-existant F-Secure employee "David Adams, Dept. Research, F-Secure Development". The addresses used in this attack included "press @ f-secure.com", "info @ f-secure.com", "editor @ f-secure.com". These emails were not sent from F-Secure’s network, they were just spoofed to look like they were coming from an F-Secure address. These emails contain a new variant of the Breplibot worm. F-Secure Anti-virus detects it as W32/Breplibot.ae. F-Secure has taken measures to inform network users about the attack, which has obviously been done to make F-Secure look bad. This is what the emails looked like: **** Begin sample email **** From: Mr D Adams < david.adams @ f-secure.com > Subject: Website Browsing Problem Hello, I noticed whilst browsing your site that there were problems with some of your links, when I tried again with Internet Explorer the problems were not there so I assume that they were caused by me using the Mozilla browser. As more people are turning to alternative browsers now it may be of help for you to know this. I have enclosed a screen capture of the problem so your team can get it fixed if you deem it an issue. Kind regards, David Adams Dept. Research F-Secure Development **** End sample email **** About F-Secure F-Secure Corporation protects consumers and businesses against computer viruses and other threats from the Internet and mobile networks. We want to be the most reliable provider of security services in the market. One way to demonstrate this is the speed of our response. According to independent studies in 2004 and 2005 our response time to new threats is significantly faster than our major competitors. Our award-winning solutions are available for workstations, gateways, servers and mobile phones. They include antivirus and desktop firewall with intrusion prevention, antispam and antispyware solutions, as well as network control solutions for Internet Service Providers. Founded in 1988, F-Secure has been listed on the Helsinki Exchanges since 1999, and has been consistently growing faster than all its publicly listed competitors. F-Secure headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland, and we have regional offices around the world. F-Secure protection is also available as a service through major ISPs, such as France Telecom, TeliaSonera, PCCW and Charter Communications. F-Secure is the global market leader in mobile phone protection provided through mobile operators, such as T-Mobile and Swisscom and mobile handset manufacturers such as Nokia. The latest real-time virus threat scenario news are available at the F-Secure Data Security Lab weblog at http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/ For more information please contact: F-Secure Corporation Mikko Hyppönen, Chief Research Officer Tel. +358 400 648 180