"Whaling" is newest kind of spam attack

"Whaling" is a new form of phishing attacks. It is called whaling because the spam emails are carefully targeted towards big fish, or whales. Spammers have been sending carefully crafted emails that look like an official U.S. Federal Court sub poena. Clicking on the link embedded in the email secretly installs a keystroke logger on your computer which then sends userids, passwords, and credit card numbers to the spammer.

We actually got one of those sub poenas about two weeks ago, and it certainly looked official. But sub poenas are usually delivered in person, and so after looking closely at the email and some of the links, we quickly determined it was spam.