Scammers exploit recent wave of attacks to trick victims with phishing attacks

Scammers exploit the recent a wave of attacks to trick victims with phishing offensive and steal sensitive data from the unaware users.

Crooks always exploits the media attention on tragic events for their illegal activities and trick victims with social engineering techniques. Experts observed scammers in the past exploiting news like the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 or the Boston marathon attack.

Now terrorism is always in the headlines, people fear possible new attacks so it’s normal that crooks will try to exploit the situation.

The Czech news portal iDNES reported that scammers have been exploiting the news of a fake ‘terrorist act’ in Prague for cyber attacks.

The idea was to trick victims into revealing personal data in the wake of recent attacks in Europe.

The fake news reports a “deadly attack” in Prague that killed more than 300 people and 600 injured. The scammers use to exploit Facebook to spread the fake news, the choice of the delivery mechanism is not causal, social media allow attackers to reach wide audience instantaneously.

A keen eye will immediately notice that the image is not Prague despite crooks used a fake “News Czeck” page including a “NBC News” to read more about the attack. In reality, the link redirects victims to a phishing that request users’ Facebook login credentials.

Facebook has reportedly been blocking the phishing pages used in this campaign.

be aware of suspicious links and change passwords immediately if you believe to have been tricked.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Facebook, scammers)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.