Cybercriminals frequently use fake search engine listings to take advantage of our trust in popular brands, and then scam us. It often starts, as with so many attacks, with a sponsored search result on Google.
In the latest example of this type of scam, we found tech support scammers hijacking the results of people looking for 24/7 support for Apple, Bank of America, Facebook, HP, Microsoft, Netflix, and PayPal. Here’s how it works: Cybercriminals pay for a sponsored ad on Google pretending to be a major brand. Often, this ad leads people to a fake website. However, in the cases we recently found, the visitor is taken to the legitimate site with a small difference.
Read more…
Source: Malwarebytes Labz
Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- Excel Files with Hidden Sheets Target Users in Italy
May 5, 2020
A spam campaign using emails that have Excel file (.xls) attachments (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.XF.HIDDBOOK.THDBHBO) has been seen circulating and targeting users in Italy and some users in Germany and other countries. The attachment appears blank when opened, but it has a sheet set to “hidden” that attempts to connect to a URL and download a ...
- Europol: Hacker Group Selling Databases With Millions Of User Credentials Busted In Poland And Switzerland
May 5, 2020
Polish and Swiss law enforcement authorities, supported by Europol and Eurojust, dismantled InfinityBlack, a hacking group involved in distributing stolen user credentials, creating and distributing malware and hacking tools, and fraud. On 29 April 2020, the Polish National Police (Policja) searched six locations in five Polish regions and arrested five individuals believed to be members of ...
- COVID-19: Cloud Threat Landscape
May 4, 2020
Unit 42 researchers analyzed 1.2 million newly observed hostnames (NOH) containing keywords related to the COVID-19 pandemic from March 9, 2020 to April 26, 2020 (7 weeks). 86,600+ fully qualified domain names are classified as “high-risk” or “malicious” (C2, malware, or phishing), spread across various regions , as shown in Figure 1. The United States ...
- TrickBot Attack Exploits COVID-19 Fears with DocuSign-Themed Ploy
May 1, 2020
Threat actors are using people’s interest in the Department of Labor’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to spread what appears to be the TrickBot trojan in a new spam campaign that security researchers discovered recently. Recent analysis from spam honeypots set by IBM X-Force discovered actors targeting email recipients with fake messages that claim to ...
- Upgraded Cerberus Spyware Spreads Rapidly via MDM
May 1, 2020
A newly discovered variant of the Cerberus Android trojan has been spotted, with vastly expanded and more sophisticated info-harvesting capabilities, and the ability to run TeamViewer. It was spotted by researchers being used in a targeted campaign on a multinational conglomerate. Unusually, the sample propagated through the employee pool via the infected company’s mobile device management ...
- Spear-phishing campaign compromises executives at 150+ companies
April 30, 2020
A cybercrime group operating since mid-2019 has breached the email accounts of high-ranking executives at more than 150 companies, cyber-security firm Group-IB reported today. The group, codenamed PerSwaysion, appears to have targeted the financial sector primarily, which accounted for more than half of its victims; although, victims have been recorded at companies active across other verticals ...

