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:
- Mirai Variant V3G4 Targets IoT Devices
February 15, 2023
From July to December 2022, Unit 42 researchers observed a Mirai variant called V3G4, which was leveraging several vulnerabilities to spread itself. The vulnerabilities exploited include the following: CVE-2012-4869: FreePBX Elastix Remote Command Execution Vulnerability Gitorious Remote Command Execution Vulnerability CVE-2014-9727: FRITZ!Box Webcam Remote Command Execution Vulnerability Mitel AWC Remote Command Execution Vulnerability Read more… Source: Palo Alto Unit 42
- Scandinavian Airlines hit by cyber attack
February 15, 2023
Scandinavian airline SAS said it was hit by a cyber attack Tuesday evening and urged customers to refrain from using its app but later said it had fixed the problem. News reports said the hack paralyzed the carrier’s website and leaked customer information from its app. Read more… Source: Skift
- Pepsi Bottling Ventures says info-stealing malware swiped sensitive data
February 14, 2023
Crooks have breached Pepsi Bottling Ventures’ network and, after deploying info-stealing malware, made off with sensitive personal and financial information according to a notification sent to consumers. The breach happened on or around December 23, 2022. However, Pepsi Bottling Ventures – America’s largest manufacturer and distributor of Pepsi-Cola beverages – didn’t discover the unauthorized activity until ...
- Romance scam targets security researcher, hilarity ensues
February 14, 2023
It sounds like the plot of a somewhat far-fetched romcom-slash-thriller Netflix series, maybe billed as You meets Your Place or Mine, dropping just in time for Valentine’s Day. In it, a pig butchering romance scammer targets her next victim: Sophos’s lead threat researcher. The security biz would probably want us to make very clear that no ...
- New MortalKombat ransomware and Laplas Clipper malware threats deployed in financially motivated campaign
February 14, 2023
Since December 2022, Cisco Talos has been observing an unidentified actor deploying two relatively new threats, the recently discovered MortalKombat ransomware and a GO variant of the Laplas Clipper malware, to steal cryptocurrency from victims. Talos observed the actor scanning the internet for victim machines with an exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP) port 3389, using one ...
- Cloudflare blocks record-breaking 71 million RPS DDoS attack
February 13, 2023
This weekend, Cloudflare blocked what it describes as the largest volumetric distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to date. The attacks were launched using over 30,000 IP addresses from multiple cloud providers against various targets, including gaming providers, cloud computing platforms, cryptocurrency firms, and hosting providers. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer