Got an unexpected email from the Director of Human Resources? Careful before you click, it’s likely to be the latest phishing scam that’s currently being intercepted by the MailGuard team.
Masquerading as a ‘Staff Memo’, the email claims “names highlighted in yellow are the ones approved for open vacation and salary increase next month”, and includes a link to an attachment for review. Recipients are encouraged to “Kindly return your response to verify date before the month end.”
See an example of the email below, which includes personalisation to the recipient, and insertion of the name of the targeted company, to mimic legitimate internal staff email communications.
The email says that it comes from the "Director of Human Resources" at the company of the recipient, but it was actually sent via a compromised account at a completely different company, using an IP address from the Netherlands.
Curious staff members who click through on the link are presented with an Adobe PDF file, titled ‘Annual Vacation – 2022.pdf’ and dated ‘Monday, September 26th, 2022’. The phishing page is hosted on Plesk (a web hosting platform).
To download the file, recipients are prompted to enter their email address and password.
Once their credentials are entered and submitted, the attacker harvests them for later use, and the user is redirected to a different page, confirming their annual leave submission.
Email scams impersonating HR related issues are popular with cybercriminals, as they are of interest to most recipients, and they play on the psychology and curiosity of staff members. Earlier this month MailGuard reported on this payroll scam, and these recruitment fraud scams.
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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