New Scam Uses Fraud Support Social Engineering to Take Victims for Thousands of Dollars

Stu Sjouwerman | May 24, 2022

New Scam Uses Fraud Support Social Engineering to Take Victims for Thousands of DollarsA new scam borrows a page from the tech support scams that target older victims telling them potential fraud has been found, offering to “help” solve the issue and ultimately asking for banking details.

Security researchers at Malwarebytes highlight a new scam in which victims are called offering to help the victim with identified fraud on their bank account, drawing attention to both the idea of fraud and the victim’s money. But instead of triggering a response that puts the victim on edge and suspicious of everyone, this Fraud Support scam seems to instead put its victims at enough ease that they walk scammers right into their bank account.

While this scam typically preys on older victims, it demonstrates that if you align the right scam with the right target victim audience and create the right level of urgency, any scam – even one that feels a lot like the tech support scams – can be successful.

The scam also makes it clear that successful scams and cyberattacks don’t exclusively use email as their medium, making it obvious that anyone within an organization that has access to the company’s finances be put through Security Awareness Training to ensure they understand all the possible ways financial scams can take place, and how to avoid making your organizations a victim.

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