Department of Trade and Industry Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB) issues a warning to the public against a malicious email with the subject heading “Department of Trade and Industry Complaint.”
⚠️DTI-EMB issues this advisory to warn the public against a malicious email with the subject heading “Department of Trade and Industry Complaint.” https://t.co/h5kBy00tu5 #iamDTIph pic.twitter.com/iSnFK0ypgS
— DTI – EMB (@DTIExport) November 13, 2019
The said email contains a Trojan virus that may jeopardize the victim’s affected devices, network, and eventually sensitive data.
Stated below is the content of the said email:
Case Number: 48021041
Department of Trade and Industry
Dear Business Owner:
We are formally notifying you of a claim submitted against your company with the Department of Trade and Industry.
Your company has a rebuttal period of 7 business days from the receipt of this notice, to respond to the claim. The response must contain a final rebuttal and be no more than 5 pages in totality.
The full compliant filed as well as the response form and instructions for submitting your response have been attached to this email. Due to the privacy of the claim the file is password protected.
The password is located below. You can download the file at the link below.
Complaint_Notification: Click to Download
Password: 56673637
Your reply must be sent to us as instructed within the reply form. If we have not received notification from you within the allotted time the claim will awarded to the party filing the claim and they may take further action if they choose to do so, depending on the severity of the claim.
Waiting for your reply,
Department of Trade and Industry
Furthermore, DTI-EMB advised the recipients not to reply to the sender and instead ignore the message. It is also best to report the email as junk or spam and block the sender’s email address.
What is Trojan Virus?
According to Kaspersky, Trojan virus is a type of malware that is often disguised as legitimate software used by cyber-thieves and hackers to try and access target users’ systems. Users are usually tricked into loading and executing the virus on their systems.
Once activated, the virus allows cyber-criminals to spy its victims as well as steal sensitive data and gain backdoor access to systems— including deleting, blocking, modifying, and copying of data. It also disrupts the performance of computer devices and networks.
—(Source: Department of Trade and Industry)