KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training Blog

Credential Phishing With a Masked URL

Written by Stu Sjouwerman | Oct 23, 2019 9:55:49 AM

Cofense warns of a phishing campaign going after credentials for the Stripe online payment platform. The attackers are sending emails purporting to be from Stripe Support, telling the recipient that their account details are invalid and their account will be placed on hold unless they fix the issue immediately.

“This is cause for panic among businesses that rely solely on online transactions and payments,” Cofense explains. “Fear and urgency are the most common emotions threat actors play on, spurring otherwise rational people to make irrational decisions.”

A notable aspect of this campaign is the attacker’s use of the HTML <a> tag to hide the destination of the link to the phishing page. The emails contain hyperlinks that say “Review your details.” When the victim hovers over this hyperlink to see what the URL is, they’ll just see “Review your details” where the URL should be.

If they click on the link, the victim will be taken to a spoofed Stripe login page. After entering their credentials, they’ll be asked to enter their bank account number and phone number. Finally, the phishing page will tell them they’ve entered the wrong password and redirect them to the real Stripe login page.

The attackers have taken steps to ensure the victim doesn’t realize they’ve handed over their credentials and bank account details. Many people would simply think they entered the wrong password and then continue to log in to their legitimate Stripe account, where they would see that everything is all right. New-school security awareness training can teach your employees to watch out for these tactics so they can avoid being scammed.

Cofense has the story: https://cofense.com/new-credential-phish-masks-scam-page-url-thwart-vigilant-users/