Earlier this month, state employees in the US state of New Jersey began receiving emails that falsely represented themselves as originating with the state’s attorney general.
“At first blush, the communiques appeared to come from the state Attorney General's Office and sported a convincing njoag.gov domain. But further inspection of the sender's address revealed the alerts had been cleverly disguised by the emails' real host using a practice known as ‘spoofing,’ according to the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, which flagged the scam on April 8.”
It was a credential harvesting scam. Users who followed the instructions in the email were directed to a bogus website (which also had a plausible appearance) which urged them to verify their address and password. The New Jersey Attorney General’s office has posted a warning of the campaign:
“New Jersey State employees may have received emails impersonating the NJ Office of the Attorney General (OAG). While the communications may appear to be sent from the email address associated with njoag, it originated from a different source. While these messages have been blocked, we are making you aware out of an abundance of caution and ask that you be alert to phishing emails and spoofing techniques that can be detected by carefully examining senders’ email addresses.”
Such spoofing attacks are growing increasingly common. New-school security awareness training can help users question the requests they receive and to regard requests for credentials as suspicious.
NorthJersey.com has the story.
