The bad thing about this scam is that it’s astonishingly easy for criminals to set up, and it carefully avoids sending spoofed emails or tricking you to visit bogus websites, because the crooks use a PayPal service to generate their initial contact via official PayPal servers.Ī spoofed email is one that insists it’s from a well-known company or domain, typically by putting a believable email address in the From: line, and by including logos, taglines or other contact details copied from the brand it’s trying to impersonate. The good thing about this scam is that you should spot it for what it is: made-up nonsense. Having said that, this article is about a PayPal-branded scam that was reported to us earlier this week by a regular reader who thought it would be worth warning others about, especially for those with PayPal accounts who may be more inclined to use them at this time of year than any other. The best reason for improving your cybersecurity in the leadup to Black Friday is that it means you will be improving your cybersecurity for the rest of the year, and will encourage you to keep on improving through 2023 and beyond. …including, of course, right here on Naked Security!Īs regular readers will know, however, we’re not terribly keen on online tips that are specific to Black Friday, because cybersecurity matters 365-and-a-quarter days a year.ĭon’t take cybersecurity seriously only when it’s Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas or any other gift-giving holiday, or only for the New Year Sales, the Spring Sales, the Summer sales or any other seasonal discount opportunity.Īs we said when retail season kicked off earlier this month in many parts of the world: The campaign spotted by Avanan comes weeks after PayPal notified thousands of US customers that their logins were compromised over a month ago.Given that we’re getting into peak retail season, you’ll find cybersecurity warnings with a “Black Friday” theme all over the internet… They should also implement advanced methods to ascertain whether an email is clean and encourage a culture of transparency for users to ask for help from IT if necessary. To guard against attacks like this, Avanan recommends security teams research phone numbers found in emails before calling them. An email coming from will pass all SPF, DKIM and DMARC checks.” The email itself is not malicious–there are countless legitimate invoices sent via PayPal every day. “Beyond that, the email comes directly from PayPal. And it’s another chance to scam you on the phone.”Īccording to the Avanan team, the perks of using PayPal for threat actors are several, including the ability to send many invoices at a time and make them professional-looking. If you call that number, now they have your cell phone number and can use it for more attacks. “The general goal is to call the number or follow up for more details. Second, the phone number they list is not related to PayPal.”Īt the same time, Fuchs said some users may still decide to call the phone number to get more information about the email. “First, the grammar and spelling is all over the place. However, Avanan marketing content manager Jeremy Fuchs wrote that the body of the email could alert some cautious users that the email was not authentic. The phishing email seen as part of the malicious campaign warned users that there had been fraud on the account and threatened a fine of $699.99 should the victim not take action. This is a malicious invoice that comes directly from PayPal,” reads an advisory published earlier today. “This is different from the plenty of attacks we’ve seen that spoof PayPal. The campaign was recently discovered by security researchers at Avanan, a Check Point company, who said it was different from previous campaigns seen by the company. Threat actors have been leveraging the online payments system PayPal to send malicious invoices directly to users through the platform.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |