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:
- Thanatos ransomware: Free decryption tool released for destructive file-locking malware
June 27, 2018
Victims of a destructive form of ransomware, which fails to unlock files even if the ransom is paid, can now retrieve their files for free with a new file decryptor released by security researchers. Thanatos ransomware first started targeting Windows systems in February and multiple versions of it have been released in the months since, indicating ...
- Up to 40,000 British Ticketmaster users may have had their personal and payment details stolen by hackers
June 27, 2018
Ticketmaster UK have admitted British customers may have had their credit card data stolen in a security breach that could have affected up to 40,000 people. The company says it ‘identified malicious software’ on a third party product on Saturday, but did not reveal the breach until today. The firm said it disabled the software as soon ...
- New Malware Family Uses Custom UDP Protocol for C&C Communications
June 26, 2018
Security researchers have uncovered a new highly-targeted cyber espionage campaign, which is believed to be associated with a hacking group behind KHRAT backdoor Trojan and has been targeting organizations in South East Asia. According to researchers from Palo Alto, the hacking group, which they dubbed RANCOR, has been found using two new malware families—PLAINTEE and DDKONG—to target ...
- FakeSpy Android Information-Stealing Malware Targets Japanese and Korean-Speaking Users
June 19, 2018
Spoofing legitimate mobile applications is a common cybercriminal modus that banks on their popularity and relies on their users’ trust to steal information or deliver payloads. Cybercriminals typically use third-party app marketplaces to distribute their malicious apps, but in operations such as the ones that distributed CPUMINER, BankBot, and MilkyDoor, they would try to get their apps published ...
- Ex-CIA employee charged with leaking ‘Vault 7’ hacking tools to Wikileaks
June 18, 2018
A 29-year-old former CIA computer programmer who was charged with possession of child pornography last year has now been charged with masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the agency’s history. Joshua Adam Schulte, who once created malware for both the CIA and NSA to break into adversaries computers, was indicted Monday by the Department of Justice on 13 ...
- Banco de Chile Wiper Attack Just a Cover for $10M SWIFT Heist
June 13, 2018
A cyberattack against Chile’s largest financial institution last month, which reportedly destroyed 9,000 workstations and 500 servers, was actually cover for a larger plot to compromise endpoints handling transactions on the SWIFT network. When the dust settled on the attacks, investigators said $10 million was stolen from Banco de Chile and funneled off to an account in Hong ...