Spoofed email

Frogpond51 · 23 Nov 2014

Hi All,
I received an email from my cousin that she never sent to me. Looking at the body of the letter it was apparent that her name was altered and her email address in "<xxxxxxxxxx>" was incorrect. The hyperlink was also suspicious. Of course I did not click on it and called her to verify that she did not send it.
We have both updated & scanned our computers with anti-virus & anti-malware programs and come up clean.
Question: Is it possible to track down the original sender and what the threat would be that they are sending?
Is there any good sites or tutorials on how to track down this type of junk?
I have saved the code of the email, but am unsure what all the IP addresses in the code mean in back-tracking this. I know this isn't a high priority issue to most, but it's got me a little pissed and I just wanted to know how to track down this crap and maybe find out what the real threat might be.
Any help or input is greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading & Cheers!

Froggy

jamis · 23 Nov 2014

I used to get these all the time after my ISP changed email providers. I have even gotten email from myself that was spoofed. The only way we got rid of it was to send the ISP support folks the offending emails, which they sent to the email provider (tucows). Eventually, the spoofed emails stopped for the most part. We still get one every few months and I just forward them on to the the ISP support team.

Frogpond51 · 23 Nov 2014

Hi jamis, thanks for the good advice reporting to the ISP folks.
I guess my main question is, can I play detective and track the rats down and find out what the real threat might be? I'm just curious on how to do this & a bit put off about it.

Cheers!

jamis · 23 Nov 2014

I found it to be a pretty futile effort. After talking with my ISP's support folks, the problem was at the email service provider's end. It seemed that someone had a worm in their system and was stealing email addresses as they went through their system. All of the spoofed emails we got were scam pitches or phising attempts. It was frustrating while it was happening, but letting the email provider fix it was the best recourse. I just kept sending the offending emails to the ISP until it stopped. Oddly enough, I've not had this issue with Yahoo or gMail accounts, but these are specialty used only for certain organization memberships I have. Our primary email account is through our ISP, which is also our cable TV, and land line phone provider.

LMiller7 · 23 Nov 2014

You probably would not be successful in tracking down the source of the email. Typically the sender has gone to great lengths to make this as difficult as possible. Assessing the nature of the threat would also be very difficult.

jamis · 23 Nov 2014

One last thought. Your cousin's email or provider may be the source of the spoofed address. If you have only gotten spoofed email from her, then the issue may be at her end.

Frogpond51 · 23 Nov 2014

@jamis: thanks for the input, yes I received a similar email from another person we both know the day before, but I had just deleted when I saw it, so we are presuming that it is another person we know that is infected. The list of recipients CC'd was selective, only a few of the same contacts.

@LMiller7: Thanks for your reply. Guess I can't play detective then? I was hoping that I could sleuth this without too much complication. It appears the opinions are that this is a futile attempt to find the culprit(s).

Thanks for your replies,
Cheers!
Froggy

badcrc · 23 Nov 2014

Rogue email that appears to come from a friend is often due to the friend having a virus that has scanned their email contact list and sent back the data (and the friend's details). This could have happened a while ago and the virus could have been found and removed during a regular scan. It's a simple matter for the hacker to send out spoofed emails to all the people on his list (apparently from their friends). There's usually a link in the email 'here's a cute cat' etc that is in fact a link to more malware.

It's quite easy to change the info in an email header so it appears to come from elsewhere, although IIRC some providers check for a data mismatch and warn you.

Frogpond51 · 23 Nov 2014

Hi badcrc, thanks for your reply,
Yes the body of the letter has the reference like " ...Oprah thinks it's awesome" blabla, then the suspect hyperlink. I could post a screenshot of the body of the letter with email recipients and hyperlink blacked out, but it probably wouldn't be much help.

Cheers!
Froggy

badcrc · 23 Nov 2014

This site can give some info on email origin etc

Trace Email IP: Track Email Header, Email Tracker, Email Tracer - ID Mail Tracking

I use Thunderbird, and I just tried the site by view - message source - and copy/pasting the header info from the msg Seven Forums just sent. It showed origin as Houston, Texas and a ton of other stuff. I guess your rogue email would show Russia, China etc (no insults intended).

This all happened to me a few years ago - I started getting suspicious emails supposedly from a mate. Either by accident or design, the hacker had included his contact list as cc (and so were visible to me). The thing is - he'd been on dating sites, so had contacts like sexylady99, foxybabe77 etc (he never lived that one down LOL). I guess that's where he got the virus. I actually closed that gmail account, just to be on the safe side. Took a while to change all my eBay, Amazon etc.