Like of the year 2020 Scam
Cybersecurity researchers discovered a new way to a fraud scheme that lures the users for money. Russian Internet users with promises of financial rewards to steal their payment card details.
According to researchers at Group-IB, this multi-phishing attack exploited the credibility of Russian internet portal Rambler to trick users into a fictitious "Like of the Year 2020" contest.
The social engineering campaigns continue to be more effective to scan users. Social engineering is the simplest method to hack and collect the data of the user i.e personal as well as a financial contest.
Under the "Like of the Year" scheme, users were invited to win a large cash prize, telling them they've been randomly selected after liking a post on social media platforms such as VKontakte.
The invitations will be sent through email blasting by hacking the mail servers of a fiscal data operator, which refers to a legal entity created to aggregate.
Apart from sending emails, the fraudsters also delivered the phishing messages for cash prizes alert as google calendar events, new trends in social engineering.
"With the default calendar settings, invitation data is automatically added to it along with a reminder," Group-IB researchers highlighted.
"That way, any Google Calendar user can send event invitations to other Gmail users, even if they're not in their address books. As a result, the victim will receive a notification of the creation of a new event by mail."
The provided link unsuspectingly redirects the user to the baiting website, where the websites not only congratulates the user for winning the fake contest and a cash prize ranging from $100 to $2000 but says to redeem money online into the accounts.
After entering the details of the account for redeeming money online websites says that "They can't receive money in U.S dollars and offer them to convert it into Rubbles through an online currency exchange service -this they need to pay small amount approximately 270 rubles".
Once users agree to pay the commission and fall for the bait, the site redirects them to another attacker-controlled phishing site purporting to be a payment gateway, where they are asked to enter details such as card number, expiration date, and the CVV number, resulting in the theft of card data.
Group-IB said "Like of the Year" is just one of six different fraud campaigns that operate under the same modus operandi, including payments from a non-existent "Video Blogging Fund," and financial protection centers.
Each of these schemes was found to operate 100 to 350 domains, with the Like campaign alone accounting for more than 1,000 domains, most of which have since been blocked.
It's a known fact that criminals are continually finding new ways to trick users into revealing their information. If anything, the attack stresses the need to be vigilant when it comes to opening emails and attachments from unknown senders.
Furthermore, turning on two-step authentication, disabling the option to automatically add events from Gmail to Google Calendar, and scrutinizing the addresses in links can go a long way towards improving cyber hygiene.
According to researchers at Group-IB, this multi-phishing attack exploited the credibility of Russian internet portal Rambler to trick users into a fictitious "Like of the Year 2020" contest.
The social engineering campaigns continue to be more effective to scan users. Social engineering is the simplest method to hack and collect the data of the user i.e personal as well as a financial contest.
Under the "Like of the Year" scheme, users were invited to win a large cash prize, telling them they've been randomly selected after liking a post on social media platforms such as VKontakte.
The invitations will be sent through email blasting by hacking the mail servers of a fiscal data operator, which refers to a legal entity created to aggregate.
Apart from sending emails, the fraudsters also delivered the phishing messages for cash prizes alert as google calendar events, new trends in social engineering.
"With the default calendar settings, invitation data is automatically added to it along with a reminder," Group-IB researchers highlighted.
"That way, any Google Calendar user can send event invitations to other Gmail users, even if they're not in their address books. As a result, the victim will receive a notification of the creation of a new event by mail."
The provided link unsuspectingly redirects the user to the baiting website, where the websites not only congratulates the user for winning the fake contest and a cash prize ranging from $100 to $2000 but says to redeem money online into the accounts.
After entering the details of the account for redeeming money online websites says that "They can't receive money in U.S dollars and offer them to convert it into Rubbles through an online currency exchange service -this they need to pay small amount approximately 270 rubles".
Once users agree to pay the commission and fall for the bait, the site redirects them to another attacker-controlled phishing site purporting to be a payment gateway, where they are asked to enter details such as card number, expiration date, and the CVV number, resulting in the theft of card data.
Group-IB said "Like of the Year" is just one of six different fraud campaigns that operate under the same modus operandi, including payments from a non-existent "Video Blogging Fund," and financial protection centers.
Each of these schemes was found to operate 100 to 350 domains, with the Like campaign alone accounting for more than 1,000 domains, most of which have since been blocked.
It's a known fact that criminals are continually finding new ways to trick users into revealing their information. If anything, the attack stresses the need to be vigilant when it comes to opening emails and attachments from unknown senders.
Furthermore, turning on two-step authentication, disabling the option to automatically add events from Gmail to Google Calendar, and scrutinizing the addresses in links can go a long way towards improving cyber hygiene.
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