Scammers send all sorts of messages with attachments and those attachments can contain malware.

Everyone should know that’s it’s potentially dangerous to run a programme supplied by an unknown person or company without being able to verify it is safe, but the scammers attach all sorts of file types in their messages in the hope of coning you into opening them.

Numerous file types can be used by scammers to infect your devices, including-

1. Compressed files. Most commonly compressed into TAR or gzip format but any other compression can be equally dangerous as the scammer attempts to get around malware scanners.
2. Microsoft Office documents containing macros
3. Executable programmes in any computer language e.g. javascript
4. PDF files
5. Disk images in ISO or IMG formats
6. Web pages – asp, html, php etc.
7. Scripting languages e.g. shell

 

There are many more less commonly used file types that scammers also try to send out.

Make sure you have up to date anti-malware on your devices and if warned that a file may be unsafe to open – do not take risks.

If you have any experiences with phishing scams do let me know, by email.