Watch Out for Malware in Fake iPhone 5 Emails

October 4th may be the big day for Apple to announce the new iPhone, but it seems internet scammers are trying to say that it’s already out and will be available as soon as this Friday.

Tech journalist Abram Wagenaar posted a tweet this morning on Twitter with a screenshot of the fake email he received introducing the new iPhone model:

Targeted attack in my mailbox: fake PR about new iPhone 5 GS with virus links, sent to journalists only? (cc @mikko) http://pic.twitter.com/v75SmA7X

Along with the ridiculously fake images, which include a completely transparent phone in one hand while the other photo shows a somehow opaque backside of the phone with an obnoxiously large 5 on it, the email comes loaded with a lovely little piece of malware known as Mal/Zapchas-A.

Once on your machine, the Mal/Zapchas-A Trojan will open up a backdoor to allow remote-control of your PC.

Fortunately there is hope for those who become infected as most antivirus programs will detect and remove the Mal/Zapchas-A Trojan.

This isn’t the first time that scammers have sent out false emails about the new iPhone either. A similar email scam featuring an iPhone 5G S was going out back in June of 2011 during Apple’s Annual Worldwide Developers Conference, although that fake model had a physical QWERTY keyboard.

Hopefully the new iPhone will be announced by Apple tomorrow, but until then... be wary of emails and malicious links! Always be sure to run up-to-date antivirus software on your PC and set it to automatically scan emails and files downloaded from the internet.

UPDATE: People really shouldn't be falling for this scam as Apple announced a new iPhone 4S and not the iPhone 5. Seems the iPhone/Apple enthusiasts weren't the only ones wrong. :)