DC businessman loses thousands after clicking on wrong e-mail

DC businessman loses thousands after clicking on wrong e-mail - Pay-per-click revenue in the online advertising business may be diminishing for traditional media publishers, but thieves increasingly are earning five- to seven-digit returns when victims click on a booby-trapped link or attachment sent via e-mail. The latest victim to learn this was Nigel Parkinson, president of D.C.-based Parkinson Construction, a firm with an estimated $20 million in annual revenue that has worked on some of Washington's top gathering places, including the new D.C. Convention Center and the Nationals baseball stadium. Parkinson said he had an expensive crash course in computer security, when on Nov. 24, he clicked a link in an e-mail purporting to be from the Social Security Administration warning him about potential errors on his Social Security statement. Parkinson fell for the ruse and ended up downloading a copy of the Zeus Trojan, a prolific family of malicious software that criminal gangs have used to great effect to




[Brian Krebs]