Commonwealth Bank customers should be wary of an email claiming “Your Netbank is temporarily suspended.’’ It’s likely to be the latest email scam now being intercepted by MailGuard, looking to harvest customers' credentials.
Sent from ‘Commonwealth Inc’, the legitimate looking email from ‘noreply(at)cba(dot)com(dot)au claims, “We noticed an attempt to sign in to your account from an unrecognized device in Australia. For your security, we have disabled your account to prevent further unauthorised use.” The email asks customers to complete their ‘’account verification” to restore access.
Here’s what the email looks like:
When a customer clicks on the orange “More Details” button they are taken to a Commonwealth Bank branded login page (pictured below) where the customer is asked to enter their client number and password. The phishing page is hosted at hysjz(dot)com
The next step requests customers' personal details including Name, Date of Birth, Email Address and Phone Number.
Once these credentials are entered and submitted, the attacker harvests them for later use.
Customers are then taken to an OTP (One Time Password) verification page. The page asks for an ‘OTP code’ which has been sent to the mobile phone number provided, mimicking an authentic OTP security process. This technique is often used by cybercriminals to feign authenticity.
Following this, customers are asked to provide their credit card details.
From here customers are directed to a waiting page which, after a few seconds redirects to another OTP request page.
Finally, customers are taken to a confirmation page stating that their “details have been confirmed successfully”, which redirects them to the official Commonwealth Bank page.
Although those behind the scam have gone to great lengths to imitate CBA’s Netbank email communications and Login pages, upon closer inspection, grammatical errors present on some of the pages are obvious red flags.
Australia’s largest bank, according to the company website, Commonwealth Bank ‘serves 15.9 million customers, employs 48,900 people and has more than 800,000 shareholders.’ The banks’ trusted name and sizeable customer base makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals who are keen to dupe customers into handing over online account credentials, credit card information and personal details for use in financial crimes like fraudulent payments, for identity theft and to sell that information to other cybercrime operations for use in other scams. For this reason, similar scams are common, like these others intercepted by MailGuard, mimicking CBA in January, and September and August .
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.
Users are urged 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.
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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