[AusNOG] Bigpond email abuse

[James Williamson]

Hi All,

We saw an external user a few months ago who had their Bigpond address compromised, and the entire mailbox dumped. Afterwards, they discovered friends and colleagues are receiving replies to years-old threads (although the new message is from a random email address), usually with some sort of phishing link. Now we've seen it again with a second and unrelated Bigpond user.

Has anybody seen anything similar before? I'm not familiar with this breed of spam, and to see two of them from the same host has my curiosity up a bit. Trying to find other cases like this eluded my Google-fu.

[example, redactions mine]
From: Robyn ******* <Robyn*********@anetafons.pl> 
Sent: Friday, 21 May 2021 2:32 AM
To: Allison ******* <Allison.******@******.au>
Subject: Re: RE: ********

--EMAIL FROM EXTERNAL ADDRESS, CHECK LINKS & ATTACHMENTS BEFORE CLICKING OR OPENING THEM--
 

Good afternoon,
It's Robyn *******. Please look at the report and deal with any problems. Here is the document link:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!*******?e=ysj***
password: 5214 


On 2018-12-07 15:34, Allison ******** wrote:
Hi Allison

Thanks so much for your time in showing me around **** recently. I was 
really  impressed with your knowledge of the programs and facilities, 
and the ***** in general.
(snip)
[end example]

Cheers,
James