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Scammers are using invoices sent through PayPal.com to trick recipients into calling a number to dispute a pending charge. The missives — which come from Paypal.com and include a link at Paypal.com that displays an invoice for the supposed transaction — state that the user’s account is about to be charged hundreds of dollars. Recipients who call the supplied toll-free number to contest the transaction are soon asked to download software that lets the scammers assume remote control over their computer.
KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader who received an email from paypal.com that he immediately suspected was phony. The message’s subject read, “Billing Department of PayPal updated your invoice.”
A copy of the phishing message included in the PayPal.com invoice.
While the phishing message attached to the invoice is somewhat awkwardly worded, there are many convincing aspects of this hybrid scam. For starters, all of the links in the email lead to paypal.com. Hovering over the “View and Pay Invoice” button shows the button indeed wants to load a link at paypal.com, and clicking that link indeed brings up an active invoice at paypal.com.
Also, the email headers in the phishing message (PDF) show that it passed all email validation checks as being sent by PayPal, and that it was sent through an Internet address assigned to PayPal.
Both the email and the invoice state that “there is evidence that your PayPal account has been accessed unlawfully.” The message continues:
“$600.00 has been debited to your account for the Walmart Gift Card purchase. This transaction will appear in the automatically deducted amount on PayPal activity after 24 hours. If you suspect you did not make this transaction, immediately contact us at the toll-free number….”
Here’s the invoice that popped up when the “View and Pay Invoice” button was clicked:
The phony PayPal invoice, which was sent and hosted by PayPal.com.
The reader who shared this phishing email said he logged into his PayPal account and could find no signs of the invoice in question. A call to the toll-free number listed in the invoice was received by a man who answered the phone as generic “customer service,” instead of trying to spoof PayPal or Walmart. Very quickly into the conversation he suggested visiting a site called globalquicksupport[.]com to download a remote administration tool. It was clear then where the rest of this call was going.
I can see this scam tricking a great many people, especially since both the email and invoice are sent through PayPal’s systems — which practically guarantees that the message will be successfully delivered. The invoices appear to have been sent from a compromised or fraudulent PayPal Business account, which allows users to send invoices like the one shown above. Details of this scam were shared Wednesday with PayPal’s anti-abuse (phishing@paypal.com) and media relations teams.
PayPal said in a written statement that phishing attempts are common and can take many forms.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy on our platform for attempted fraudulent activity, and our teams work tirelessly to protect our customers,” PayPal said. “We are aware of this well-known phishing scam and have put additional controls in place to mitigate this specific incident. Nonetheless, we encourage customers to always be vigilant online and to contact Customer Service directly if they suspect they are a target of a scam.”
It’s remarkable how well today’s fraudsters have adapted to hijacking the very same tools that financial institutions have long used to make their customers feel safe transacting online. It’s no accident that one of the most prolific scams going right now — the Zelle Fraud Scam — starts with a text message about an unauthorized payment that appears to come from your bank. After all, financial institutions have spent years encouraging customers to sign up for mobile alerts via SMS about suspicious transactions, and to expect the occasional inbound call about possibly fraudulent transactions.
Also, today’s scammers are less interested in stealing your PayPal login than they are in phishing your entire computer and online life with remote administration software, which seems to be the whole point of so many scams these days. Because why rob just one online account when you can plunder them all?
The best advice to sidestep phishing scams is to avoid clicking on links that arrive unbidden in emails, text messages and other mediums. Most phishing scams invoke a temporal element that warns of dire consequences should you fail to respond or act quickly. If you’re unsure whether the message is legitimate, take a deep breath and visit the site or service in question manually — ideally, using a browser bookmark to avoid potential typosquatting sites.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is urging states and localities to beef up security around proprietary devices that connect to the Emergency Alert System — a national public warning system used to deliver important emergency information, such as severe weather and AMBER alerts. The DHS warning came in advance of a workshop to be held this weekend at the DEFCON security conference in Las Vegas, where a security researcher is slated to demonstrate multiple weaknesses in the nationwide alert system.
A Digital Alert Systems EAS encoder/decoder that Pyle said he acquired off eBay in 2019. It had the username and password for the system printed on the machine.
The DHS warning was prompted by security researcher Ken Pyle, a partner at security firm Cybir. Pyle said he started acquiring old EAS equipment off of eBay in 2019, and that he quickly identified a number of serious security vulnerabilities in a device that is broadly used by states and localities to encode and decode EAS alert signals.
“I found all kinds of problems back then, and reported it to the DHS, FBI and the manufacturer,” Pyle said in an interview with KrebsOnSecurity. “But nothing ever happened. I decided I wasn’t going to tell anyone about it yet because I wanted to give people time to fix it.”
Pyle said he took up the research again in earnest after an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I was sitting there thinking, ‘Holy shit, someone could start a civil war with this thing,”’ Pyle recalled. “I went back to see if this was still a problem, and it turns out it’s still a very big problem. So I decided that unless someone actually makes this public and talks about it, clearly nothing is going to be done about it.”
The EAS encoder/decoder devices Pyle acquired were made by Lyndonville, NY-based Digital Alert Systems (formerly Monroe Electronics, Inc.), which issued a security advisory this month saying it released patches in 2019 to fix the flaws reported by Pyle, but that some customers are still running outdated versions of the device’s firmware. That may be because the patches were included in version 4 of the firmware for the EAS devices, and many older models apparently do not support the new software.
“The vulnerabilities identified present a potentially serious risk, and we believe both were addressed in software updates issued beginning Oct 2019,” EAS said in a written statement. “We also provided attribution for the researcher’s responsible disclosure, allowing us to rectify the matters before making any public statements. We are aware that some users have not taken corrective actions and updated their software and should immediately take action to update the latest software version to ensure they are not at risk. Anything lower than version 4.1 should be updated immediately. On July 20, 2022, the researcher referred to other potential issues, and we trust the researcher will provide more detail. We will evaluate and work to issue any necessary mitigations as quickly as possible.”
But Pyle said a great many EAS stakeholders are still ignoring basic advice from the manufacturer, such as changing default passwords and placing the devices behind a firewall, not directly exposing them to the Internet, and restricting access only to trusted hosts and networks.
Pyle, in a selfie that is heavily redacted because the EAS device behind him had its user credentials printed on the lid.
Pyle said the biggest threat to the security of the EAS is that an attacker would only need to compromise a single EAS station to send out alerts locally that can be picked up by other EAS systems and retransmitted across the nation.
“The process for alerts is automated in most cases, hence, obtaining access to a device will allow you to pivot around,” he said. “There’s no centralized control of the EAS because these devices are designed such that someone locally can issue an alert, but there’s no central control over whether I am the one person who can send or whatever. If you are a local operator, you can send out nationwide alerts. That’s how easy it is to do this.”
One of the Digital Alert Systems devices Pyle sourced from an electronics recycler earlier this year was non-functioning, but whoever discarded it neglected to wipe the hard drive embedded in the machine. Pyle soon discovered the device contained the private cryptographic keys and other credentials needed to send alerts through Comcast, the nation’s third-largest cable company.
“I can issue and create my own alert here, which has all the valid checks or whatever for being a real alert station,” Pyle said in an interview earlier this month. “I can create a message that will start propagating through the EAS.”
Comcast told KrebsOnSecurity that “a third-party device used to deliver EAS alerts was lost in transit by a trusted shipping provider between two Comcast locations and subsequently obtained by a cybersecurity researcher.
“We’ve conducted a thorough investigation of this matter and have determined that no customer data, and no sensitive Comcast data, were compromised,” Comcast spokesperson David McGuire said.
The company said it also confirmed that the information included on the device can no longer be used to send false messages to Comcast customers or used to compromise devices within Comcast’s network, including EAS devices.
“We are taking steps to further ensure secure transfer of such devices going forward,” McGuire said. “Separately, we have conducted a thorough audit of all EAS devices on our network and confirmed that they are updated with currently available patches and are therefore not vulnerable to recently reported security issues. We’re grateful for the responsible disclosure and to the security research community for continuing to engage and share information with our teams to make our products and technologies ever more secure. Mr. Pyle informed us promptly of his research and worked with us as we took steps to validate his findings and ensure the security of our systems.”
The user interface for an EAS device.
Unauthorized EAS broadcast alerts have happened enough that there is a chronicle of EAS compromises over at fandom.com. Thankfully, most of these incidents have involved fairly obvious hoaxes.
According to the EAS wiki, in February 2013, hackers broke into the EAS networks in Great Falls, Mt. and Marquette, Mich. to broadcast an alert that zombies had risen from their graves in several counties. In Feb. 2017, an EAS station in Indiana also was hacked, with the intruders playing the same “zombies and dead bodies” audio from the 2013 incidents.
“On February 20 and February 21, 2020, Wave Broadband’s EASyCAP equipment was hacked due to the equipment’s default password not being changed,” the Wiki states. “Four alerts were broadcasted, two of which consisted of a Radiological Hazard Warning and a Required Monthly Test playing parts of the Hip Hop song Hot by artist Young Thug.”
In January 2018, Hawaii sent out an alert to cell phones, televisions and radios, warning everyone in the state that a missile was headed their way. It took 38 minutes for Hawaii to let people know the alert was a misfire, and that a draft alert was inadvertently sent. The news video clip below about the 2018 event in Hawaii does a good job of walking through how the EAS works.
Email scammers sent an Uber to the home of an 80-year-old woman who responded to a well-timed email scam, in a bid to make sure she went to the bank and wired money to the fraudsters. In this case, the woman figured out she was being scammed before embarking for the bank, but her story is a chilling reminder of how far crooks will go these days to rip people off.
Travis Hardaway is a former music teacher turned app developer from Towson, Md. Hardaway said his mother last month replied to an email she received regarding an appliance installation from BestBuy/GeekSquad. Hardaway said the timing of the scam email couldn’t have been worse: His mom’s dishwasher had just died, and she’d paid to have a new one delivered and installed.
“I think that’s where she got confused, because she thought the email was about her dishwasher installation,” Hardaway told KrebsOnSecurity.
Hardaway said his mom initiated a call to the phone number listed in the phony BestBuy email, and that the scammers told her she owed $160 for the installation, which seemed right at the time. Then the scammers asked her to install remote administration software on her computer so that they could control the machine from afar and assist her in making the payment.
After she logged into her bank and savings accounts with scammers watching her screen, the fraudster on the phone claimed that instead of pulling $160 out of her account, they accidentally transferred $160,000 to her account. They said they they needed her help to make sure the money was “returned.”
“They took control of her screen and said they had accidentally transferred $160,000 into her account,” Hardaway said. “The person on the phone told her he was going to lose his job over this transfer error, that he didn’t know what to do. So they sent her some information about where to wire the money, and asked her to go to the bank. But she told them, ‘I don’t drive,’ and they told her, “No problem, we’re sending an Uber to come help you to the bank.'”
Hardaway said he was out of town when all this happened, and that thankfully his mom eventually grew exasperated and gave up trying to help the scammers.
“They told her they were sending an Uber to pick her up and that it was on its way,” Hardaway said. “I don’t know if the Uber ever got there. But my mom went over to the neighbor’s house and they saw it for what it was — a scam.”
Hardaway said he has since wiped her computer, reinstalled the operating system and changed her passwords. But he says the incident has left his mom rattled.
“She’s really second-guessing herself now,” Hardaway said. “She’s not computer-savvy, and just moved down here from Boston during COVID to be near us, but she’s living by herself and feeling isolated and vulnerable, and stuff like this doesn’t help.”
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), seniors are often targeted because they tend to be trusting and polite. More importantly, they also usually have financial savings, own a home, and have good credit—all of which make them attractive to scammers.
“Additionally, seniors may be less inclined to report fraud because they don’t know how, or they may be too ashamed of having been scammed,” the FBI warned in May. “They might also be concerned that their relatives will lose confidence in their abilities to manage their own financial affairs. And when an elderly victim does report a crime, they may be unable to supply detailed information to investigators.”
In 2021, more than 92,000 victims over the age of 60 reported losses of $1.7 billion to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The FBI says that represents a 74 percent increase in losses over losses reported in 2020.
The abuse of ride-sharing services to scam the elderly is not exactly new. Authorities in Tampa, Fla. say they’re investigating an incident from December 2021 where fraudsters who’d stolen $700,000 from elderly grandparents used Uber rides to pick up bundles of cash from their victims.
Whether using the internet for play or work, you want to spend your time online enjoying the peace of mind that comes with having a secure network.
You don’t want to contend with someone taking your personal data — whether it’s credit card information, passwords, or bank account details — via malware or a data breach on your Android, Windows, or Apple iOS device.
Fortunately, with some sensible precautions and simple steps, you can use your connected devices productively without worrying about cybercriminals and malicious software. This article explains how to stop hackers from getting access to your sensitive data.
You can take steps to protect your different computing and mobile devices and operating systems. These steps can be divided into technological solutions and the right awareness and information to provide a comforting measure of self-protection.
It’s like learning karate for self-defense, giving you confidence as you negotiate the wider world (and hoping that you never have to use it).
When it comes to identity protection software, McAfee provides a proven solution with our identity protection and privacy services. The protection includes alerts if your sensitive information is found on the dark web (up to 10 months sooner than other providers), personal data cleanup from sites gathering and selling your information, and an unlimited virtual public network (VPN) service that protects your privacy as you use public Wi-Fi networks.
You’ll also get up to $1 million in identity theft coverage and hands-on restoration support to help you reclaim your identity.
Simple, obvious passwords and passcodes (like your street address, your birthday, your kids’ or pets’ names, or “1234” or “abcd”) are easy for cybercriminals to crack, giving them unwanted access to your private data.
The stronger your password, the better your protection. Some best password practices include:
It’s important not to be a standing target. Just as you should use different passwords for everything, you should regularly change your passwords. You should do this a few times a year (although some cyber experts say this might not be necessary if you have a long and very complicated password).
If you have a number of passwords that you update often, it might be worth getting a password manager like McAfee True Key to keep track of them. Not only will you not be faced with remembering all your different passwords or writing them down (also a no-no), but it can also help you create and store unique passwords.
The software uses the strongest encryption algorithms available to protect your passwords, scrambling them so no one else can access them. It’ll also suggest new passwords and automatically log you into your online accounts with just one master password.
Another important line of defense is multi-factor authentication (sometimes known as two-factor authentication). This system uses a password and a second piece of verification — often an SMS message sent to your Android device or iPhone — to authenticate your identity.
This provides hard-to-beat protection even if a hacker has your password. Besides receiving SMS codes, there are also code-generating apps and physical security keys.
Thinking before you click on an email or text is a very important defense against phishing scams. Your bank won’t send you an email or text notifying you that there’s been suspicious activity on your account.
Does getting a large refund from your phone company sound too good to be true? It is. Similarly, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) won’t text to tell you that you owe them money, and princes aren’t going to give you a fortune out of the blue.
Internet users beware: If you’re not absolutely certain that the text message you received is from a legitimate and trusted source, delete it. You can always contact the business or person directly to confirm that the message is legit.
Any operating system or app you use is open to malicious cyberattacks. This is why you should keep all your software up to date with the latest versions. Software developers are continually fixing holes in their products and offering cybersecurity patches to make them as safe and hacker-proof as possible.
Make sure your software, firmware, and security settings are up to date on your home’s Wi-Fi router, as well. You can often change your settings to allow for automatic updates.
Sure, who doesn’t like to go to a cafe, library, or hotel lobby to use the free Wi-Fi? But security is often weak in these public networks. If you open your online banking account or access personal information, you may unwittingly be giving a personal invitation to eavesdropping cybercriminals.
This is where the bank-grade level of protection of McAfee Secure VPN comes in, which automatically turns on when you need it and keeps you safe on public Wi-Fi networks.
Even if your device does get hacked, you can protect vital information on your Windows or macOS system with an encryption program like BitLocker or FileVault. You can protect any hard drive you use, including portable ones and USB keys.
It’s also a good idea to only shop at encrypted websites marked with the prefix “HTTPS” in their URLs.
One of the best ways to surf the web in comfort while keeping hackers at bay is with the comprehensive solutions provided by McAfee Total Protection.
Your protection includes proactive measures (meaning we’ll guide you to the best choices for prevention), early detection, and expert identity theft support.
This means you’ll get identity monitoring, up to $1 million in identity theft coverage, lost wallet protection, premium antivirus software, a secure VPN, and personal data removal. In particular, our Personal Data Cleanup service will help find and remove your personal information from data broker websites and people search sites.
With McAfee, you don’t have to be afraid of hackers. Let us deal with them.
The post How to Stay One Step Ahead of Hackers appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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