“Free Windows 8” offer leads to email hijacking

Hot on the heels of the recent release of Windows 8 and a generic spam campaign supposedly delivering a Windows license comes another attempt to take advantage of unwary users.

An email purportedly coming from the “Microsoft Windows 8 Team” has been spotted hitting inboxes around the world, offering “the new Window 8 freely and fully protected.”

In order to get it, the recipients are instructed to follow the offered link and to submit their email, username, password and server domain username on the following webpage:

Hosted on a Slovakian web server and in no way tied to Microsoft, the page has been crafted to send the entered information to cyber crooks as soon as the “Upgrade Account” button is hit.

“Fortunately, it’s hardly the most sophisticated attack in the world, but the offer of some brand new software for free may be enough to trick some people into clicking on the link,” Graham Cluley points out.