Indian Computer Emergency Response Team has issued an advisory regarding Phishing Attack Campaign being planned on a large scale against Indian individuals and businesses.
The phishing campaign is expected to use malicious emails under the pretext of local authorities in charge of dispensing government-funded Covid-19 support initiatives. Such emails are designed to drive recipients towards fake websites where they are deceived into downloading malicious files or entering personal and financial information.
The phishing campaign is expected to be from email such as “[email protected]” and the attack campaign is expected to start on 21st June 2020.
Phishing Theme
Hackers claimed to have 2M individual email IDs. The plan is to send emails free COVID-19 testing for all residence of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad inciting them to provide personal information. Please see email evidence below.
General Precautions:
Don’t open attachments in unsolicited e-mails, even if they come from people in your contact list, and never click on a URL contained in an unsolicited e-mail, even if the link seems benign. In cases of genuine URLs close out the e-mail and go to the organization’s website directly through the browser.
Leverage Pretty Good Privacy in mail communications. Additionally, advise users to protect the sensitive documents stored on the internet-facing machines to avoid potential leakage
Exercise caution when opening e-mail attachments even if the attachment is expected and the sender appears to be known.
Scan for and remove suspicious e-mail attachments; ensure the scanned attachment is its “true file type” (i.e. the extension matches the file header suspected file types are “exe|pif|tmp|url|vb|vbe|scr|reg|cer|pst|cmd|com|bat|dll|dat|hlp|hta|js|wsf”).
Beware about phishing domain, spelling errors in emails, websites and unfamiliar email senders
Check the integrity of URLs before providing login credentials or clicking a link.
Do not submit personal information to unknown and unfamiliar websites.
Beware of clicking form phishing URLs providing special offers like winning prize, rewards, cashback offers.
Consider using Safe Browsing tools and update your antivirus.
