(ANSA) – MILAN, APRIL 06 – Researchers from Armorblox, a company that deals with secure communication platforms, have identified a new hacking campaign that targets WhatsApp users. The criminals are posing as officials of the Moscow Region Road Safety Center. The threat exploits the popularity of WhatsApp to make victims believe they have received a voice message via email. The body displays a graphic that resembles that of the Meta proprietary app, with a ‘play’ button. The victim, convinced to click to listen to the audio, actually opens a website which, after receiving the ‘allow’ command from the browser, installs a malware on the computer and begins to display spam windows. The virus then works to memorize all saved passwords, including those of financial services. According to the researchers, the campaign affected over 27,600 users. Armorblox sheds light on a couple of issues related to the spread of this umpteenth email scam, falling within the cauldron of the broader ‘phishing’, activities to deceive users to be taken ‘on the hook’. The researchers specify that WhatsApp does not send email messages to subscribers, let alone audio to be listened to via PC. Furthermore, Armorblox points out that the sender of the phony email came from a legitimate address, in all probability fallen into the hands of criminals. This is a web domain belonging to the Moscow Region Road Safety Center, with the suffix ‘cbddmo.ru’. For this reason, neither antivirus nor any other monitoring programs block it, believing that it is a genuine communication. The only precaution remains that of not opening attachments or clicking on messages that come from accounts that you do not know. (HANDLE).
Source: Ansa
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