Thousands of scam pages target numerous countries worldwide

Researchers spotted over 2,000 scam pages that target Arabic-speaking job hunters in numerous countries from January last year to this year.

A recent tally from a published advisory released earlier this week showed what countries had received the most risks from the campaign. Based on reports, Egypt is the most targeted country of this recent cybercriminal operation, garnering 48% of all confirmed scam incidents.

Saudi Arabia and Algeria followed the African country and joined them as the most impersonated countries by scammers.

 

The scam pages spoof popular brands from multiple countries in the Middle East.

 

According to investigations, the scam pages impersonate over 40 famous brands from about 13 countries in the middle eastern region of Asia. The researchers discovered that nearly 70% of scam pages in this new cybercriminal operation impersonate companies in the logistics department.

The attackers spoofed widespread food and beverage companies and the petroleum industry.

Researchers explained that the campaign depends on an initial phishing mechanic that redirects victims to scam web pages, including a similar description about a phoney job vacancy.

Once a target clicks the apply button on the scam pages, the campaign will redirect them to another phishing website that the scammers developed to gather troves of data, such as social network accounts.

Subsequently, the attackers will access their victims’ accounts and alter the associated password, email address, and phone number before demanding ransom from the victims to recover the account.

Cybersecurity experts revealed that this scam campaign peaked in August last year, which resulted in more than 600 new fake job-offering web pages.

Furthermore, experts warn job seekers that the actors’ fake social media pages are still operating, and new ones are generated daily.

These recent cybercriminal campaigns that scam job seekers could also impact the spoofed companies since their brands could suffer wrong impressions from consumers. However, the users are the ones who should be more careful with these scam attempts, as many threat actors will likely adopt these strategies to conduct their malicious campaigns.