Phish and chips

A year ago

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a fascinating blog post about spotting phishing attempts via email: An Annotated Field Guide to Identifying Phish. For me, it’s one of those topics I come back to every now and then, especially when I receive dodgy looking emails with “simple” HTML links that purport to be legit.

I read this particular post just after getting five (yes, five!) variants of the following email:

(USPS Tax Letter is out for delivery from IRS On January 31, 2023, 2:35:55 AM)
Tax Revenue Letter from IRS.GOV
Message received on January 31, 2023, 2:35:49 AM
Message Transcript "Hello I am calling in regards to your Irs Letter delivery....."

And the included HTML file link (called IRS-TAX-LETTER.HTM to reinforce its legitimacy)? Here you go:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <title>Redirecting ....</title>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body>

<div class="container">
<script>
window.location.replace("https://xhnktldlk363c5d9139e8fa.rihann.ru/Mjulianb@devexpress.com");
</script>
</div>

</body>
</html>

Yep, indeed. If I’d opened that HTML file to see what it showed, I’d have been transported to some GUID-altered URL in Russia. No thanks.

The very next day I got another scam email; this time with the interesting bit being the use of a URL with a non-ASCII character. Ready?

McAfee scam email

Hmm, McAfee.com, right?

I’m pretty sure that, like me, you’d spotted the “curly” lower-case ƒ – it’s even used in the word “feedback”. Well, it’s also used in the “more info” URL to differentiate it from the real mcafee.com domain. Tsk tsk.

Grimaces & Misere

Mon 13-Feb-2023 3:30 PM Blog / tags: chat scam
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