Students are now the target of hackers who are exploiting new tactics to spoof their email accounts and spread fraud through Phishingto make other victims, by advancing masked.
The security of email accounts has become a crucial issue in our digital age. Phishing attacks, in particular, have become significantly sophisticated in recent years. Today we look at an alarming trend, which cyber specialist Checkpoint draws our attention: fraud by theft of student email accounts.
The hacker takes control of the victim’s email and uses its recipients to slip under the security radar
Once an attacker obtains the credentials of an email account, they can cause considerable damage. Unfortunately, we are increasingly seeing what experts call BEC 2.0, a technique where hackers take control of an account and send malicious emails from legitimate addresses. A worrying new trend has recently emerged with student email accounts being used to carry out these phishing attacks.
The researchers of Checkpoint tell us that in a recent identified attack, a cybercriminal took control of a student’s account at a large university in the Middle East. Afterward, he sent an email to a long list of recipients. This strategy is particularly well thought out, since it allows hackers to avoid attracting the attention of the security services of email clients.
Phishing emails are then designed to appear urgent to recipients, and obviously enticing, by promising a substantial reward or pretending a certain urgency. “ This is the third time we have tried to contact you » ; “ You received a lot of money », the recipes are well known. But certain elements can betray their fraudulent nature, such as the contact email address that appears at the bottom of the letter, which does not correspond to that of the university.
How do fraudsters do it?
Phishing attacks are often clumsy. But here, we are rather in the case of a well-rehearsed threat, the method of which must be understood. Cybercriminals are taking over student accounts to legitimately send phishing emails. These emails are often responses to existing conversations, which makes them even more credible.
Once the conversation is resumed or started, the fraudsters waste no time talking about changing banking information, hijacking invoice-related discussions or hiding emails in an existing conversation. They also engage in creating dishonest payment requests from trusted accounts. Social engineering, still very effective in short.
To protect yourself from these attacks, awareness is once again king. Check Point advises IT security professionals in services, businesses or communities to follow some recommendations that we would like to relay to you.
- Implement email security that monitors unusual behavior;
- implement security that can automatically block account takeover attacks;
- use AI or machine learning to detect phishing language in emails.
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