Scammers took advantage of the SVB crisis for phishing operations

Malicious actors have taken advantage of the recent Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) crisis to search for potential targets actively. These targets were affected by the SVB’s collapse, which is now prone to different phishing scams and BEC attacks.

Researchers discovered that threat groups had registered suspicious domains and web pages to execute their operations. Based on reports, several malicious websites, such as svbclaims[.]net, login-svb[.]com, svbclaim[.]com, svbdebt[.]com, Svbbailout[.]com, and svbcollapse[.]com have suddenly emerged to deceive potential victims.

Most domain names in this issue, including the SVB keyword, suddenly popped out on March 12th. These pages could allow the threat actors to request different details about a target, such as names, numbers, email addresses, and balance amounts, to process a claim.

 

The SVB crisis has also resulted in BEC and crypto scams.

 

According to investigations, the SVB crisis has allowed threat actors to conduct BEC attacks and crypto scams aside from registering suspicious domains. Analysts identified numerous cryptocurrency scams where the phishing sites had established false USDC reward programs.

In BEC scams, some affected customers have reported receiving new non-SVB account information from their present vendors to aid payment transactions.

A separate researcher reported that it had identified a threat campaign that uses baits to USDC. USDC is a stablecoin related to the USD impacted by the SVB incident.

In a similar incident, a cybercriminal impersonated Circle, a fintech company that issues USDC. The operation uses a lure that promises customers a one-is-to-one ratio of USDC to USD redemption.

Furthermore, another cybersecurity researcher reported an SVB-related incident that deployed a KYC phishing campaign. These researchers detected the movement nearly 80 times within hours after its initial launch.

The SVB crisis has resulted in numerous fraudsters wanting to execute different malicious campaigns. The incident affected the customers and other companies involved with SVB.

Cybersecurity experts believe that the SVB collapse will experience a prolonged impact on numerous organisations. Lastly, more sophisticated scams will try to exploit current events.