Taking advantage of people in their time of need, these bottom feeders of the cybercriminal world promise assistance and, instead, collect personal details to make a buck.
While the world waits on vaccines to be widely distributed and for the pandemic to finally be over, there are plenty of people that are still hurting financially and could use some monetary help right about now.
And these lowest of the low cybercriminals know this. So what better way to take a victim for their personally identifying information than the lure of unemployment aid or financial assistance from the government?
According to new data from security vendor Inky, new scams have been seen in the wild purporting to be government agencies with new programs. One example, below, offers recipients up to $5,800 in cast payments! That’s certainly enough to motivate a potential victim to respond.
Source: Inky
Victims are taken to a website made to look like a US government agency site, where personal details, including social security number, are asked of the victim. Once completed, the victim is told someone will contact them soon.
The challenge for organizations today is you can’t simply assume that your employees aren’t experiencing financial strain (a spouse or partner could be without a job, for example). So, even in cases like this where the attack focus is the individual, this kind of scam can just as well impact an organization, should the malicious focus be compromising web credentials or installing malware.
New school Security Awareness Training makes it all too clear that in cases when it seems to be “too good to be true” it absolutely is, and that emails like this should be recognized for what they truly are and avoided.
Here's how it works:
