Spam and phishing in Q3 2018

[harlan4096]

Quarterly highlights

Personal data in spam

We have often said that personal data is candy on a stick to fraudsters and must be kept safe (that is, not given out on dubious websites). It can be used to gain access to accounts and in targeted attacks and ransomware campaigns.

In Q3, we registered a surge of fraudulent emails in spam traffic. This type of scam we have already reported at the beginning of the year. A ransom (in bitcoins) is demanded  in exchange for not disclosing the “damaging evidence” concerning the recipients. The new wave of emails contained users’ actual personal data (names, passwords, phone numbers), which the scammers used to try to convince victims that they really had the information specified in the message. The spam campaign was carried out in several stages, and it is likely that the fraudsters made use of a range of personal information databases, as evidenced, for example, by the telephone number formats that varied from stage to stage.Full reading: https://securelist.com/spam-and-phishing...018/88686/