A tricky new phishing scam has been intercepted by MailGuard which has the subject line “Important! messages pending 4/4”. If you are not a MailGuard user and this email lands in your inbox, we recommend deleting it immediately without clicking on any links.
The sender name on the email shows “Mail-admin” but is actually being sent from “contact(at)galaxympex(dot)org”, and the domain itself leads to a page which contains malware.
The email begins with a large heading which states “Blocked Incoming Messages”, and then goes on to explain that the user’s domain administrator has blocked emails due to a validation error.
There is a table which shows four different emails which are supposedly in quarantine. Under ‘recipient’, the user’s email address is listed for all four, and fake subject lines and dates have been entered. In order to “release' the emails, the user is instructed to click a large button which says “Quarantine Inbox”.
Although there are a number of grammatical and formatting errors within the email, using the recipient’s email address in the table, and their domain in the email copy and a quarantined email subject line helps to make it feel more personalised.
Here's what the email looks like:
If the recipient clicks on the ‘Quarantine Inbox’ or any other link in the email, they’re taken to a phishing page where they’re instructed to enter their email address and password.
However, this site is unique because it uses an API which automatically scrapes the branding corresponding with the entered email address domain and mirrors it on the page to help feign authenticity.
In the example below, our team have entered a MailGuard email address. You will see our logo and “MAILGUARD” appear, which makes it seem as though the website is associated with MailGuard, although this is not the case. If you were to change the email to “example(at)Netflix(dot)com”, the branding would update to match.
Here’s what it looks like:
If the user enters their password, they are shown an error message which says “Password Timeout.! Please re-enter your password.” Although at this point, the user’s password has already been harvested, re-entering the password will cause the page to redirect to the domain associated with the email address, which in the case of the example shown, would be www.mailguard.com.au.
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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