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The U.S. FBI has issued a warning on scammers impersonating refund payment portals. Looking into the ramifications stemming from the statement for Digital Journal is Tonia Dudley, Chief Information Security Officer at Cofense.
Dudley begins by explaining the background to the statement and the current attack status facing the U.S.: “Just weeks after Cofense’s Phishing Defense Center (PDC) detected a campaign leveraging fraudulent tax income refunds, the FBI has warned of a new scam involving the impersonation of financial institutions’ refund payment portals.”
Dudley adds: “This scam uses the fraudulent Geek Squad email subject line “Service Renewal from Geek Squad,” notifying victims that their account has been “charged” and urging them to contact “Geek Squad” support to request a refund through a toll-free phone number that is directed to an Indian call center. There is evidence that this email subject line has existed since August.”
In terms of how the situation has unfolded, Dudley recounts: “In April of 2021, we began looking at the scam emails that we were able to collect from various sources. At the time, BazarCall was in full swing and using methods very similar to other scam emails. The use of emails without URLs or attachments to further nefarious goals was not new as 419 scammers (Nigerian Price schemes) have done this for years.”
There were further developments too: “The addition of call center operators to add…
