Have you received an email from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) informing you that your income statement has been finalised? Don’t be fooled, chances are that it’s the latest scam that’s doing the rounds.
The email, as shown below, comes from a sender purporting to be the Australian Taxation Office, and signed off by the ‘myGov team’, however in reality it’s sent from a compromised Microsoft 365 account. It asks you to ‘Complete Your Lodgement to Process Your Tax Refund’ by signing in via the ‘myatoclaimportal.info’ link.
Clicking the link, victims are met with a CAPTCHA challenge to verify that they are a real person, before being directed to the phishing page that’s impersonating myGov. The CAPTCHA, the phishing page and the newly registered domain crafted for the scam are all hosted on Cloudflare in an attempt by the cybercriminals to avoid detection.
After successfully completing the CAPTCHA the first page simply asks users to sign in with their myGov credentials, starting with their full name, mobile/cell number and date of birth.
At this step, users receive an SMS message providing an authorisation code to verify their identity.
Having verified the users full name, date of birth and mobile/ cell number, the scam proceeds to harvest their security questions and answers.
Once complete, users are presented with a success page, confirming that ‘Your account has been successfully linked properly to the ATO.’
Scams like this one are not uncommon. They leverage your trust in familiar brands and institutions like myGov and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). MailGuard reported on this myGov scam in October, and this one in January last year, and these scams impersonating the ATO as far back as 2019 and 2020.
MailGuard advises all recipients of this email to delete it immediately without clicking on any links. Providing your personal details can result in your sensitive information being used for criminal activity and may have a severe negative impact on your business and its financial well-being.
MailGuard urges users not to click links or open attachments within emails that:
- Are not addressed to you by name.
- Appear to be from a legitimate company but use poor English or omits personal details that a legitimate sender would include.
- Are from businesses that you were not expecting to hear from, and/or
- Take you to a landing page or website that is not the legitimate URL of the company the email is purporting to be sent from.
Many businesses turn to MailGuard after an incident or a near miss, often as a result of an email similar to the one shown above. If unwanted emails are a problem for your business, don’t wait until it’s too late.
Reach out to our team for a confidential discussion by emailing expert@mailguard.com.au or calling 1300 30 44 30.
One email is all that it takes
All that it takes to devastate your business is a cleverly worded email message that can steal sensitive user credentials or disrupt your business operations. If scammers can trick one person in your company into clicking on a malicious link or attachment, they can gain access to your data or inflict damage on your business.
For a few dollars per staff member per month, you can protect your business with MailGuard's predictive and advanced email security. Talk to a solution consultant at MailGuard today about securing your company's inboxes.
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