- Phishers target financial executives via LinkedIn, posing as a fake investment fund
- Victims are tricked into entering their Microsoft credentials on spoofed login pages
- Non-email phishing now represents 34% of attacks tracked, compared to 10% in three months
A new phishing campaign targets financial executives and other high-net-worth individuals on LinkedIn, aiming to steal their Microsoft credentials, as well as session cookies.
Security researchers at Push Security say the campaign is not taking place via email, as is common with these types of attacks, but directly on LinkedIn, where targets would receive a direct message from someone claiming to be part of a newly created “Common Wealth” investment fund.
“I am delighted to exclusively invite you to join the board of directors of the Common Wealth investment fund in South America in partnership with AMCO – Our Asset Management arm, a bold new venture capital fund launching an investment fund in South America,” the phishing message reads.
Expand the Reach
By clicking on the link, the victim goes through a number of redirects, most of which are designed to bypass automated security solutions and different scanners. This is done, among other things, with CAPTCHAs and Cloudflare Turnstile.
Finally, the victim is prompted to log in to their Microsoft account, but although the landing page looks almost identical to the legitimate Microsoft login page, it belongs to the attackers and relays the information their way. This includes not only login credentials but also session cookies, ensuring that they remain logged in even if the victim decides to change the password.
Phishing is one of the oldest scams on the Internet, but Push Security notes that the move to LinkedIn signals a broader shift in which email is no longer the only avenue of attack:
“Phishing no longer just happens in emails,” said Jacques Louw, director of product at Push Security. “In the past month, about 34% of the phishing attempts we tracked took place through sites like LinkedIn and other channels other than email, up from less than 10% three months ago.
We would also say that this is also due to the improvement in email security over the years and the increased difficulty for phishing messages to reach users’ inboxes.
Via BeepComputer
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