Phishing Campaign Against LinkedIn Spotted
A new phishing campaign was launched to attack LinkedIn members. According to reports, hackers are now using compromised LinkedIn accounts to deliver messages containing malicious links as they attempt to steal confidential information and credentials from account holders.
The hacking incident was uncovered by security researchers at Malwarebytes. According to them, the hackers took advantage of the social media site's messaging system to carry out their new phishing campaign.
Since the messages were also made to look legitimate, a number of unsuspecting users have already been victimized by the phishing activity, including those who paid for Premium membership. Once the accounts of these paying members have been hijacked, the hackers used these Premium accounts to contact users directly through the site's InMail feature to victimize even more.
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As reported by the researchers who spotted the phishing campaign, the messages sent by the hackers were received by LinkedIn users either directly on the site or via their email. A number of them looked as if LinkedIn was asking the user to open a Google Drive file which actually contained the link directing them to the hacker's website.
The phishers found it a bit easy to get LinkedIn users' credentials because the website which the latter was directed to after clicking on the link looked like a legitimate Google log-in screen that asked for their username and password. Once the users keyed in these pieces of information, that was when the hackers got to steal their Google accounts.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Verizon Data Breach Investigations suggested that around 61 percent of all data breaches this year have occurred in business, so businesses are urged to secure their SMEs as much as possible. Back in 2012, a massive phishing scam also attacked LinkedIn and affected over 117 million user accounts.
