Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus

What is Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus?

"Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus" is a spam email campaign that distributes a malicious attachment. As usual, victims receive a deceptive email encouraging them to open a document, however, unlike other similar campaigns, "Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus" does not proliferate viruses - its purpose is to gather account credentials.

This campaign's emails are presented as tax certificates. The user is encouraged to open a document, which is supposedly a tax form, however, it is an HTML document designed to look like Microsoft's One Drive website.

It contains rogue JavaScript code that delivers a pop-up window encouraging users to enter their One Drive credentials (email addresses and passwords) to download the tax documents. This is a scam. Once entered, the credentials are saved to a remote server controlled by cyber criminals.

Obviously, Microsoft has nothing to do with this - the HTML file emulates the One Drive website simply to give the impression of legitimacy and trick users into entering their login details/passwords. Unfortunately, many Internet users do not take account safety seriously. They use identical email addresses and passwords to register multiple accounts on various websites.

Therefore, cyber criminals can gain access to their personal accounts on social networks, banks, and so on. This can lead to serious privacy issues or even identity theft. If you have already opened a "Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus" campaign attachment and entered your credentials, immediately change passwords of accounts that have identical credentials.

Threat Summary:

Name	Tax Clearance Certificate spam
Threat Type	Trojan, Password stealing virus, Banking malware, Spyware
Symptoms	Trojans are designed to stealthily infiltrate victim's computer and remain silent thus no particular symptoms are clearly visible on an infected machine.
Distribution methods	Infected email attachments, malicious online advertisements, social engineering, software cracks.
Damage	Stolen banking information, passwords, identity theft, victim's computer added to a botnet.
Malware Removal (Windows)	To eliminate possible malware infections, scan your computer with legitimate antivirus software. Our security researchers recommend using Combo Cleaner. ▼ Download Combo Cleaner To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license for Combo Cleaner. 7 days free trial available. Combo Cleaner is owned and operated by Rcs Lt, the parent company of PCRisk.com read more.

Many spam campaigns are similar to the Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus. For example, "Court Order Email Virus", "DPD Delivery Email Virus", "TicketSales Email Virus", etc. Unlike "Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus", however, most of these campaigns proliferate high-risk viruses, rather than gather information.

On the other hand, distributed viruses are also likely to record information. In addition, distributed malware might encrypt data (ransomware), stealthily mine cryptocurrencies (crypto-mining trojans), cause chain infections, and so on. Therefore, opening malicious attachments can lead to significant financial/data losses, serious privacy issues, and further system infections.

How did Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus infect my computer?

Essentially, "Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus" does not infiltrate any malware into the system. It simply promotes a deceptive HTML file that attempts to trick users into entering account credentials.

In most cases, however, spam email campaigns proliferate files such as MS Office documents, JavaSciprt files, etc. that, once opened, execute commands that download and install viruses onto the system. These attachments are presented as legitimate and, therefore, lack of knowledge and careless behavior by users can lead to system infections.

How to avoid installation of malware?

To prevent this situation, be very cautious when browsing the Internet. Carefully analyze all email attachments. If you have received unexpected/irrelevant files and/or the sender seems suspicious/unrecognizable, do not open any attachment and delete the email immediately.

Furthermore, keep installed applications/operating system up-to-date and use a legitimate anti-virus/anti-spyware suite, since these tools are likely to detect malware before malicious actions are performed. If you have already opened a "Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus" attachment, we recommend running a scan with Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows to automatically eliminate infiltrated malware.

Text presented in the "Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus" email message:

Subject: RE: TAX CLEARANCE CERTIFICATE
Dear sir/madam
TCC issued for application no 0007649
In pursuance of your application no. 0007649 for Tax Clearance Certificate,
please be informed that your TCC has been issued and is now available for download.
Download the attached TCC, Your official TCC Number is 10048500
Thank you for using the online TCC Portal.
Office of the tax Clearance.

Malicious attachment distributed via "Tax Clearance Certificate Email Virus" spam campaign:

Instant automatic malware removal: Manual threat removal might be a lengthy and complicated process that requires advanced IT skills. Combo Cleaner is a professional automatic malware removal tool that is recommended to get rid of malware. Download it by clicking the button below:
▼ DOWNLOAD Combo Cleaner By downloading any software listed on this website you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license for Combo Cleaner. 7 days free trial available. Combo Cleaner is owned and operated by Rcs Lt, the parent company of PCRisk.com read more.

Quick menu:

• What is Tax Clearance Certificate spam?
• Types of malicious emails.
• How to spot a malicious email?
• What to do if you fell for an email scam?

Types of malicious emails:

Phishing Emails

Most commonly, cybercriminals use deceptive emails to trick Internet users into giving away their sensitive private information, for example, login information for various online services, email accounts, or online banking information.

Such attacks are called phishing. In a phishing attack, cybercriminals usually send an email message with some popular service logo (for example, Microsoft, DHL, Amazon, Netflix), create urgency (wrong shipping address, expired password, etc.), and place a link which they hope their potential victims will click on.

After clicking the link presented in such email message, victims are redirected to a fake website that looks identical or extremely similar to the original one. Victims are then asked to enter their password, credit card details, or some other information that gets stolen by cybercriminals.

Emails with Malicious Attachments

Another popular attack vector is email spam with malicious attachments that infect users' computers with malware. Malicious attachments usually carry trojans that are capable of stealing passwords, banking information, and other sensitive information.

In such attacks, cybercriminals' main goal is to trick their potential victims into opening an infected email attachment. To achieve this goal, email messages usually talk about recently received invoices, faxes, or voice messages.

If a potential victim falls for the lure and opens the attachment, their computers get infected, and cybercriminals can collect a lot of sensitive information.

While it's a more complicated method to steal personal information (spam filters and antivirus programs usually detect such attempts), if successful, cybercriminals can get a much wider array of data and can collect information for a long period of time.

Sextortion Emails

This is a type of phishing. In this case, users receive an email claiming that a cybercriminal could access the webcam of the potential victim and has a video recording of one's masturbation.

To get rid of the video, victims are asked to pay a ransom (usually using Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency). Nevertheless, all of these claims are false - users who receive such emails should ignore and delete them.

How to spot a malicious email?

While cyber criminals try to make their lure emails look trustworthy, here are some things that you should look for when trying to spot a phishing email:

• Check the sender's ("from") email address: Hover your mouse over the "from" address and check if it's legitimate. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft, be sure to check if the email address is @microsoft.com and not something suspicious like @m1crosoft.com, @microsfot.com, @account-security-noreply.com, etc.
• Check for generic greetings: If the greeting in the email is "Dear user", "Dear @youremail.com", "Dear valued customer", this should raise suspiciousness. Most commonly, companies call you by your name. Lack of this information could signal a phishing attempt.
• Check the links in the email: Hover your mouse over the link presented in the email, if the link that appears seems suspicious, don't click it. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft and the link in the email shows that it will go to firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0... you shouldn't trust it. It's best not to click any links in the emails but to visit the company website that sent you the email in the first place.
• Don't blindly trust email attachments: Most commonly, legitimate companies will ask you to log in to their website and to view any documents there; if you received an email with an attachment, it's a good idea to scan it with an antivirus application. Infected email attachments are a common attack vector used by cybercriminals.

To minimise the risk of opening phishing and malicious emails we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows. 

Example of a spam email:

What to do if you fell for an email scam?

• If you clicked on a link in a phishing email and entered your password - be sure to change your password as soon as possible. Usually, cybercriminals collect stolen credentials and then sell them to other groups that use them for malicious purposes. If you change your password in a timely manner, there's a chance that criminals won't have enough time to do any damage.
• If you entered your credit card information - contact your bank as soon as possible and explain the situation. There's a good chance that you will need to cancel your compromised credit card and get a new one.
• If you see any signs of identity theft - you should immediately contact the Federal Trade Commission. This institution will collect information about your situation and create a personal recovery plan.
• If you opened a malicious attachment - your computer is probably infected, you should scan it with a reputable antivirus application. For this purpose, we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows.
• Help other Internet users - report phishing emails to Anti-Phishing Working Group, FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, National Fraud Information Center and U.S. Department of Justice.

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