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:
- DeCypherIT – All eggs in one basket
December 12, 2019
These days, attackers use cheap and publicly accessible services to help them bypass Anti-Virus protections and gain a foothold in their victims’ systems. We give a behind the scenes look at a service called CypherIt, which is sold publicly as a legitimate service but is used to wrap malwares and hide their malicious content. This evasion technique ...
- Zeppelin: Russian Ransomware Targets High Profile Users in the U.S. and Europe
December 11, 2019
Zeppelin is the newest member of the Delphi-based Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) family initially known as Vega or VegaLocker. Although it’s clearly based on the same code and shares most of its features with its predecessors, the campaign that it’s been part of differs significantly from campaigns involving the previous versions of this malware. Vega samples were first ...
- The quiet evolution of phishing
December 11, 2019
The battle against phishing is a silent one: every day, Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection detects millions of distinct malicious URLs and email attachments. Every year, billions of phishing emails don’t ever reach mailboxes—real-world attacks foiled in real-time. Heuristics, detonation, and machine learning, enriched by signals from Microsoft Threat Protection services, provide dynamic, robust protection against email threats. Phishers have been ...
- Story of the year 2019: Cities under ransomware siege
December 11, 2019
Overall awareness of the need for security measures is growing, and cybercriminals are increasing the precision of their targeting to locate victims with security breaches in their defense systems. Looking back at the past three years, the share of users targeted with ransomware in the overall number of malware detections has risen from 2.8% to 3.5%. While ...
- Cyberattack Downs Pensacola’s City Systems
December 10, 2019
The city of Pensacola, Fla., said it has been hit by a cyberattack that shut down the city’s computer networks and affected its systems. The attack occurs just days after a shooting occurred Friday at U.S. military base Naval Air Station Pensacola, leaving three dead. Pensacola’s mayor, Grover Robinson, told news outlets that he didn’t know if the cyberattack was ...
- Snatch Team Steals Data and Hammers Orgs with Ransomware
December 10, 2019
A fresh ransomware variant known as “Snatch” has been spotted in campaigns, forcing Windows machines to reboot into Safe Mode before beginning the encryption process. It’s one of multiple components of a malware constellation being used in carefully orchestrated attacks that also feature rampant data collection. According to researchers with SophosLabs, Snatch runs itself in an ...