Security News
The bloom is back on phishing attacks with criminals doubling down on fake messages abusing popular brands compared to the year prior. Microsoft, Facebook and French bank Crédit Agricole are the top abused brands in attacks, according to study on phishing released Tuesday.
A new phishing campaign codenamed 'Ducktail' is underway, targeting professionals on LinkedIn to take over Facebook business accounts that manage advertising for the company. The threat actor reaches out to employees on LinkedIn who could have Facebook business account access, for example, people listed as working in "Digital media" and "Digital marketing" as their roles.
The operators of the QBot malware have been using the Windows Calculator to side-load the malicious payload on infected computers. Security researcher ProxyLife recently discovered that Qakbot, has been abusing the the Windows 7 Calculator app for DLL side-loading attacks since at least July 11.
Phishing emails impersonating LinkedIn continue to make the bulk of all brand phishing attempts; according to Check Point, 45% of all email phishing attempts in Q2 2022 imitated the style of communication of the professional social media platform, with the goal of directing targets to a spoofed LinkedIn login page and collecting their account credentials. To compare: In Q4 2021, LinkedIn-themed phishing attempts were just 8 percent of the total brand phishing attacks flagged by Check Point.
The Google Workspace team announced today that it started rolling out a new method to block Google Calendar invitation spam, available to all customers, including legacy G Suite Basic and Business users."To help keep your Google Calendar free from spam, you can now select an option to display events on your calendar only if they come from a sender you know," the Google Workspace team said today.
LinkedIn is holding the top spot for the most impersonated brand in phishing campaigns observed during the second quarter of 2022. Compared to the first quarter of the year, LinkedIn impersonation dropped from 52% to 45%. However, it maintains a considerable distance from the second most imitated brand by fraudsters, Microsoft, currently at 13%. The central theme in spoofed Microsoft emails is requests to verify Outlook accounts to steal usernames and passwords.
LinkedIn and Microsoft are the most impersonated brands in phishing attacks. LinkedIn and Microsoft took top spots as the most exploited brands in phishing attacks last quarter, Check Point Research reported on Tuesday.
Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the US, and the U.K. the Roaming Mantis operation moved to targeting Android and iOS users in France, likely compromising tens of thousands of devices. Roaming Mantis is believed to be a financially-motivated threat actor that started targeting European users in February.
A newly discovered phishing kit targeting PayPal users is trying to steal a large set of personal information from victims that includes government identification documents and photos. The kit is hosted on legitimate WordPress websites that have been hacked, which allows it to evade detection to a certain degree.
By misusing the PayPal logo and general design, the phishing kit leads users through a set of pages and forms aimed at collecting information that can later be used to steal the victims' identity and perform money laundering, open cryptocurrency accounts, make fraudulent tax return claims, and much more. The attackers using the kit are targeting legitimate WordPress sites.