.XZ Virus Email Attachments Being Sent By Cybercriminals

Cybercriminals are sending malicious emails with malicious .xz attachments, therefore, online users who have received email messages with attached files with names or extensions ending with ".xz" are asked not to open them. This is because the attachments are compressed files that may contain malware, malicious programs or viruses. And, any attempt to open the malicious attachments will result in the recipients getting their computers infected with a virus, Trojan horse, spyware, ransomware or other malware.

A Fake Email with a Malicious .XZ Attachment

R: Request for Quotation - Skyline
Thu 2/20/2020 3:24 PM
From: SKYLINE
IMG-000101 pdf.xz - 938 KB
Hello Sir/Madam,
This is Mahmoud from Skyline trading co., ltd .
could you check below and provide me with last prices ..

Cybercriminals have started storing their malware in ".XZ" files to help prevent antivirus software from detecting them. In other words, they do it because the archived malicious email attachments may bypass the recipients' antivirus software.

What is an .XZ file?

A lossless data compression file format based on the LZMA algorithm,