LINDON, Utah -- Avinti, a developer of pro-active e-mail security solutions, has issued security alert to corporate users of a new targeted attack that is addressed to the target by name and disguised as invoice attachment from the reputable and publicly-traded company Beckman Coulter, demonstrating increasing sophistication by hackers.

The e-mail contains a trojan and is spoofed to look as though it is coming from the accounting department of Beckman Coulter, a manufacturer of test and diagnostic equipment. Officials at Beckman have confirmed that the e-mail did not originate from Beckman. The malware comes in a word document named Proforma_invoice.doc, which, when opened, contains an executable disguised as an icon that launches the malware. It can easily be mistaken for an errant invoice from a reputable company.

“Clicking on what appears as an icon in the document launches an embedded .exe that installs a browser helper object that can track the Web sites the user visits and captures any data the user types using forms through their Web browser. It also appears the bot itself communicates periodically with others in a network and possibly can be controlled from the outside for downloading new software, receiving new commands, etc.,” said Dave Green, Avinti’s CTO. “After we caught the malware, we ran it through a well-known testing site that scans with multiple anti-virus products and only one other anti-virus product accurately identified it as a generic Trojan,” he added. “So the possibility of this getting through to a user is quite high.”

Avinti Inc.