Tax-themed malicious spam bombard inboxes

As the end of the U.S. tax season slowly approaches, cyber crooks are stepping up their game and are sending bogus out tax-themed emails.

Webroot warns about an alert supposedly sent by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, claiming that the recipient’s income tax refund appeal has been turned down:

Those users who follow the offered link will be redirected to a compromised website hosting the Blackhole exploit kit and will be saddled with various malware.

Intuit, the company that develops popular tax preparation software and offers related services to businesses, is warning its customers about bogus “TurboTax State Return Rejected” emails:

The attached .zip file that the recipients are urged to download and peruse contains malware.

If any of these or similar emails do manage to bypass anti-spam filters, users are urged to remember that following links and opening files contained in unsolicited emails is always a bad idea.