Security News > 2021 > October > FBI warns of fake govt sites used to steal financial, personal data
The FBI warned the US public that threat actors actively use fake and spoofed unemployment benefit websites to harvest sensitive financial and personal information from unsuspecting victims.
Sites used in these attacks are designed to closely resemble official government platforms to trick the targets into giving away their info, infecting them with malware, and claiming unemployment benefits on their behalf.
"The fake websites prompt victims to enter sensitive personal and financial information. Cyber actors use this information to redirect unemployment benefits, harvest user credentials, collect personally identifiable information, and infect victim's devices with malware."
The FBI said it identified 385 domains, with eight of them impersonating government sites linked to official unemployment benefits platforms.
"After the government expanded unemployment benefits to people left jobless by the pandemic, cybercriminals filed unemployment claims using other people's personal information."
The FTC received 394,280 reports regarding government benefits fraud attempts last year, most of them related to unemployment benefit identity theft fraud - compared with the 12,900 reports filed in 2019.