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The Great Resignation Sparks Phishing Attacks Impersonating LinkedIn

Technology


During the period the world has dubbed “the great resignation,” phishing scammers are shifting tactics to take advantage of those looking for a new career or place of employment.

When phishing scammers are coming up with a new campaign idea, they want a brand they can impersonate that has a significant reach to improve their chances of a successful attack. With an estimated 67 million monthly active users, LinkedIn is a pretty great choice. According to new data from security vendor Egress, a significant rise in the number of attacks since February 1, 2022, impersonating LinkedIn are being seen.

The attacks use verbiage very familiar to anyone who uses LinkedIn as the subject lines:

  • You appeared in 4 searches this week
  • You appeared in 9 searches this week
  • You have 1 new message
  • Your profile matches this job

The emails come from an unassociated email address but leverage LinkedIn branding, logos, colors, etc. The links in these emails connect victims to lookalike websites intent on harvesting the users’ credentials that can later be used to impersonate the victim in future attacks on others.

Seeing an enticing “job match” email could be just the thing to catch an employee’s interest. And while the attack above only harvests credentials, we have seen others that end up infecting business endpoints. 

Don’t get hacked by social media phishing attacks!

Many of your users are active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Cybercriminals use these platforms to scrape the profile information of your users and organization to create targeted spear phishing campaigns in an attempt to hijack accounts, damage your organization’s reputation, or gain access to your network.

Security awareness training can enable your employees to recognize phishing and other social engineering attacks. Learn more about Yeo & Yeo Technology’s security awareness training solutions.

Information used in this article was provided by our partners at KnowBe4.

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