TrendAI™ Research tracked a sustained malvertising campaign that abused Google Ads to deliver ClickFix social engineering attacks disguised as popular AI developer tools. The campaign impersonated at least six legitimate brand names, including ChatGPT Codex, Perplexity, Cursor IDE, JetBrains, Claude AI, and claude.ai, and simultaneously ran Mac utility scam lures.
By leveraging paid search ads targeting users actively seeking AI development tools, the attackers were able to target technically proficient users who are more likely to interact with command-line instructions without suspicion. This marks a sophisticated evolution of the ClickFix social engineering technique, where victims are tricked into manually executing malicious commands, typically by copying and pasting PowerShell or terminal commands under the guise of “fixing” a problem or completing a software installation.
Read more…
Source: Trend Micro
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- New QBot email attacks use PDF and WSF combo to install malware
April 17, 2023
QBot malware is now distributed in phishing campaigns utilizing PDFs and Windows Script Files (WSF) to infect Windows devices. Qbot (aka QakBot) is a former banking trojan that evolved into malware that provides initial access to corporate networks for other threat actors. This initial access is done by dropping additional payloads, such as Cobalt Strike, Brute ...
- Ex-Conti members and FIN7 devs team up to push new Domino malware
April 17, 2023
Ex-Conti ransomware members have teamed up with the FIN7 threat actors to distribute a new malware family named ‘Domino’ in attacks on corporate networks. Domino is a relatively new malware family consisting of two components, a backdoor named ‘Domino Backdoor,’ which in turn drops a ‘Domino Loader’ that injects an info-stealing malware DLL into the memory ...
- Australians lose record $3.1 billion to scams in 2022
April 16, 2023
Doris McAllister spent her whole life working hard to support herself. So, last year, when the 75-year-old saw an international bank offering a good return on deposits, she decided to transfer her life’s savings of $260,000 across to help secure her retirement. Six weeks later, when she needed to make a withdrawal, she realised she had been ...
- Uncommon infection methods – part 2
April 13, 2023
Although ransomware is still a hot topic on which Kaspersky will keep on publishing, they also investigate and publish about other threats. Recently we explored the topic of infection methods, including malvertising and malicious downloads. In this blog post, Kaspersky researchers provide excerpts from the recent reports that focus on uncommon infection methods and describe ...
- Vice Society: A tale of victim data exfiltration via PowerShell, aka stealing off the land
April 13, 2023
Threat actors (TAs) using built-in data exfiltration methods like LOLBAS negate the need to bring in external tools that might be flagged by security software and/or human-based security detection mechanisms. These methods can also hide within the general operating environment, providing subversion to the threat actor. For example, PS scripting is often used within a typical ...
- Legion: New hacktool steals credentials from misconfigured sites
April 13, 2023
A new Python-based credential harvester and SMTP hijacking tool named ‘Legion’ is being sold on Telegram that targets online email services for phishing and spam attacks. Legion is sold by cybercriminals who use the “Forza Tools” moniker and operate a YouTube channel with tutorials and a Telegram channel with over a thousand members. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer