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:
- Largest EU copper producer Aurubis suffers cyberattack, IT outage
October 28, 2022
German copper producer Aurubis has announced that it suffered a cyberattack that forced it to shut down IT systems to prevent the attack’s spread. Aurubis is Europe’s largest copper producer and the second largest in the world, with 6,900 employees worldwide, and produces one million tonnes of copper cathodes yearly. In an announcement published on their website, ...
- Joint CISA FBI MS-ISAC Guide on Responding to DDoS Attacks and DDoS Guidance for Federal Agencies
October 28, 2022
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) are releasing this joint guide to provide organizations proactive steps to reduce the likelihood and impact of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks can cost an organization time and money and may impose ...
- Defeating Guloader Anti-Analysis Technique
October 28, 2022
Unit 42 researchers recently discovered a Guloader variant that contains a shellcode payload protected by anti-analysis techniques, which are meant to slow human analysts and sandboxes processing this sample. To help speed analysis for this sample and others like it, we are providing a complete Python script to deobfuscate the Guloader sample that is available ...
- Raspberry Robin worm part of larger ecosystem facilitating pre-ransomware activity
October 27, 2022
Microsoft has discovered recent activity indicating that the Raspberry Robin worm is part of a complex and interconnected malware ecosystem, with links to other malware families and alternate infection methods beyond its original USB drive spread. These infections lead to follow-on hands-on-keyboard attacks and human-operated ransomware activity. Microsoft continuous tracking of Raspberry Robin-related activity also ...
- Attack Surface Management 2022 Midyear Review – Part 2
October 27, 2022
The cybersecurity landscape changed significantly in the first half of 2022. In our midyear roundup, Trend Micro researchers examine these changes and their effects on business operations as well as what you need to know about staying protected from online attacks. In part one of the series, Trend Micro researchers talked about the growing attack surface ...
- Medibank now says hackers accessed all its customers’ personal data
October 27, 2022
Australian insurance firm Medibank has confirmed that hackers accessed all of its customers’ personal data and a large amount of health claims data during a recent ransomware attack. In an announcement published today, the companies warned that an internal investigation into the attack has shown that the threat actors had far greater access to customer data ...