Spammers Playing in Wimbledon Court

The 127th edition of the Wimbledon Championships, and third Grand Slam event of the year, are coming to an end with the final being played July 7. When it comes to major sporting events we can expect large amount of gambling, and spammers take advantage by sending online betting and casino email spam. We have observed the following spam campaign targeting the Wimbledon Championship with a fake betting offer.
 

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Figure. Wimbledon Championship spam
 

Interestingly, in order to trick users the spammers are actually using Antispam Laws to make their spam look legitimate (which we recently blogged about in Whitewashed Spam – How Antispam Laws Are Helping Spammers). These spammers are tempting users with the fake offers like “Get started with $5 free and $500 as welcome package”. Also the spam messages contain hexadecimal-obfuscated URLs which is a technique spammers use to avoid anti-spam filters. Users should be aware of any fake betting offers.

We observed the following spoofed email header targeting the 2013 Wimbledon Championship:

Subject: Tennis action with 77 spins on Centre Court
From: All xxx Casino <REMOVED.com>

Symantec advises everyone to be cautious with unsolicited or unexpected emails related to the 2013 Wimbledon Championship and to be cautious of fake betting offers. We continue to monitor spam attacks around the clock to ensure that readers are kept up to date with the latest information on potential threats.