MailGuard Blog — Breaking alerts, news and updates on cybersecurity topics

Watch out for fake “accountant” notification emails

Written by Emmanuel Marshall | 23 August 2018 04:32:03 Z

MailGuard has detected a new email-based cyber-attack (shown above) telling the recipient they have been sent an invoice by an accountant.

“React promptly to download the invoice,” the deceptive message advises.

Clicking on the link takes the victim of this scam to a malicious website containing a hidden malware payload.

The criminals behind this attack seem to have used hijacked email accounts and websites to set up their scam. They appear to be exploiting a range of compromised education, business and other domains.

Messages like this are designed to look like routine business correspondence and lull the recipients into a false sense of familiarity. Even if a potential victim doesn't recognise the sender details, they might conceivably click on the link just to satisfy their curiosity. Cyber-attacks like this, targeting people inside companies are called social engineering hacks.

 

Don't get scammed


If your company’s email accounts aren’t protected, social engineering emails like the one above are almost certainly being received by your staff.  Cybercriminals know people can be tricked; that’s why they send out millions of scam messages and put so much effort into making them look convincing.

People are not machines; we're all capable of making bad judgement calls. Without email filtering protecting your business, it’s just a matter of time before someone in your organisation has a momentary lapse of judgement and clicks on the wrong thing.

For a few dollars per staff member per month, you can protect your business with MailGuard's predictive email security.
Talk to an expert at MailGuard today about making your company's network secure: 1300 30 44 30

 

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