{"id":18395,"date":"2022-03-01T02:10:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-01T10:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/01\/news-12128\/"},"modified":"2022-03-01T02:10:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T10:10:05","slug":"news-12128","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/01\/news-12128\/","title":{"rendered":"Unusual sign-in activity mail goes phishing for Microsoft account holders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Christopher Boyd| Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2022 09:39:15 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve received an interesting spam email which (deliberately or not) could get people thinking about the current international crisis. Being on your guard will pay dividends over the coming days and weeks, as more of the below is sure to follow.<\/p>\n

Unusual sign-in activity detected?<\/h2>\n

The email’s subject line, \u201cMicrosoft account unusual sign-in activity\u201d, is always guaranteed to attract some attention. It continues:<\/p>\n

\n

Unusual sign-in activity<\/em><\/p>\n

We detected something unusual about a recent sign-in to the Microsoft account<\/em><\/p>\n

Sign-in details<\/em><\/p>\n

Country\/region: Russia\/Moscow<\/em><\/p>\n

IP address:<\/em><\/p>\n

Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2022 02:31:23 +0100<\/em><\/p>\n

Platform: Kali Linux<\/em><\/p>\n

Browser: Firefox<\/em><\/p>\n

A user from Russia\/Moscow just logged into your account from a new device, If this wasn’t you, please report the user. If this was you, we’ll trust similar activity in the future.<\/em><\/p>\n

Report the user<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks,<\/em><\/p>\n

The Microsoft account team<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The mail provides a button to \u201creport the user\u201d, and an unsubscribe option. Should the recipient click the button, they\u2019re not forwarded to a report page. Instead, it\u2019s a Mailto: URI which opens a fresh email with a pre-filled message to be sent to a specific email account.<\/p>\n

In this case, the email’s subject line is \u201cReport the user\u201d, while the phisher\u2019s mail address claims to be some form of Microsoft account protection. They also managed to spell account wrong – \u201cacount\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don’t reply: report and delete<\/h2>\n

People sending a reply will almost certainly receive a request for login details, and possibly payment information, most likely via a bogus phishing page. It\u2019s also entirely possible the scammers will keep everything exclusively to communication via email. Either way, people are at risk from losing control of their account to the phishers. The best thing to do is not reply, and delete the email.<\/p>\n

Is this mail deliberately or accidentally referencing world events?<\/h2>\n

We have to be very clear here that anybody could have put this mail together, and may well not have anything to do with Russia directly. This is the kind of thing anyone anywhere can piece together in ten minutes flat, and mails of this nature have been bouncing around<\/a> for years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But, given current world events, seeing \u201cunusual sign-in activity from Russia\u201d is going to make most people do a double, and it\u2019s perfect spam bait material for that very reason.<\/p>\n

While the mail explicitly targets Microsoft account holders, Outlook is flagging this missive and dropping it directly into the spam box. This probably isn’t something the mail creators need, quite frankly. However, this is great news for everybody else.<\/p>\n

Miss it, miss out<\/h2>\n

Trying to panic people into hitting a button or click a link is an ancient social engineering tactic, but it sticks around because it works. We\u2019ve likely all received a \u201cbank details invalid\u201d, or \u201cmysterious payment rejected\u201d message at one point or another.<\/p>\n

Depending on personal circumstance and\/or what\u2019s happening in the world at any given moment, one person\u2019s \u201cbig deal\u201d is another one\u2019s \u201coh no, my stuff\u201d. That\u2019s all it may take for some folks to lose their login, and this mail is perhaps more salient than most for the time being.<\/p>\n

The post Unusual sign-in activity mail goes phishing for Microsoft account holders<\/a> appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Christopher Boyd| Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2022 09:39:15 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

We look at a phishing mail which may cause concern for users of Microsoft services as it claims there’s been a suspicious login from Russia.<\/p>\n

The post Unusual sign-in activity mail goes phishing for Microsoft account holders<\/a> appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[11222,5057,13255,10511,3924,251,10574],"class_list":["post-18395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-email","tag-moscow","tag-outlook","tag-phish","tag-phishing","tag-russia","tag-scams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}