A new Eir phishing scam has been uncovered which has prompted the Irish communications company to issue a warning to customers. Hundreds of customers received emails offering them a refund yesterday. To claim the refund, the email recipients have been instructed to login to their My Eir account. A fake link is supplied in the email which must be clicked to claim the refund.
Eir Phishing Scam Captures Credit Card Details of Customers
That link directs the email recipient to a fake webpage. The malicious website has been designed to look identical to the Eir website. Users are required to confirm their credit card details in order to obtain the refund. Those credentials are logged by the website and are sent to the criminals running the Eir phishing scam.
Eir has warned customers to be on the lookout for the fraudulent email messages and to delete them if they are received. Any individual who has fallen for the Eir phishing scam and has provided credit card details via the malicious website faces a high risk of credit/debit card fraud.
Phishing email campaigns such as this are commonplace. Attackers use a variety of social engineering techniques to get users to reveal sensitive information such as credit and debit card numbers, which are used by the attackers to make online purchases and rack up huge debts in the victims’ names.
The malicious emails can be extremely convincing. Criminals use legitimate imagery in the phishing emails to fool email recipients into believing the emails are genuine. The malicious spam messages usually contain a link that directs to victims to malicious websites where personal information must be disclosed in order to receive a refund, free gift, or to view important documents. The websites can look identical to the legitimate sites.
Spam Email Poses a Considerable Risk to Businesses
Email scams often direct victims to malicious websites containing exploit kits which probe for weaknesses in browsers and plugins and leverage those vulnerabilities to download malware.
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The malware poses a considerable risk for businesses. Malware is used to gain a foothold in a computer network, which can be used to launch cyberattacks to steal valuable data or to gain access to corporate email and bank accounts.
To protect against such attacks, employees should be instructed never to use links sent in emails and to login to websites directly via their browsers. Employees should be provided with training to help them identify phishing emails and email and web spam.
Businesses should also use an anti-spam service such as SpamTitan to capture spam and phishing emails. Preventing the messages from being delivered to end users is the best form of defense against such attacks, and reduces reliance of employees to identify phishing scams.