Scammer sends phishing attack, gets phished back & reported to authorities
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Story here: https://blog.knowbe4.com/knowbe4-got-a-ceo-fraud-phishing-attack.-wrong-mark
Excerpts:
Since we send millions of simulated phishing to our 2,000 enterprise customers every year, we like to think we know what we are doing, so we decided to have some fun with these scammers.
snip
The bank and the routing number are real, but the company, name and address are all false. We asked Alanna to send him another email with apologies she was late, and if "Alin" would be OK if we sent it a bit later. The hacker answered right away that was OK but it would be preferable if we could do it today. Yeah, sure.
We were very interested in knowing more, so we decided to phish back the scammer and send them an email that we thought they would fall for and get his IP address. This is how our PST Creation console looks. It's simple, has everything you need and nothing you don't.
Since he was using AOL for his scam emails we thought it would be fun to phish him back with what you see below , it would certainly make him worried!
Image omitted from this post, see link above for full context. In essence, they 'notified' the scammer that his email account got locked, tricked him into logging in to 'fix' it, and used the information (source IP, etc.) to notify authorities.
It's sad that we might not ever find out how this ends - all depends on if law enforcement shares the story with us at some point in the future. But just the idea that the bad guys might get caught using their own tricks of the trade against them...
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Filed under: Slashvertisement
I mean, it's a great story and all. But the payoff is "hey, use our product so that your staff can wreck the spammers too!"
That said, I'm all for the spammers getting theirs. Preferably for the next 20 years from a guy named Bubba.
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Filed under: Slashvertisement
Yeah, my initial draft disclosed that, sorry I didn't leave that in.
hey, use our product so that your staff can wreck the spammers too!
That's not what they're there for, but it can be used that way. {insert evil grin emoji here}
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I know someone named Bubba and let me assure you that no one need sleep hard or go hungry. Give me a dollar. This is no laughing matter.
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If you enjoy this kind of stories, here's enough for a few days of fun. These guys just do it for the lulz.
My favorite so ar is "Harry Potter and the Well of Scammers".
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The sophistication of a tool and they way a tool is used can be a good indicator of the sophistication and abilities of the tool user. So if somebody thinks that their scam will work, is quite likely to fall for something similar.
Just sayin', is all :)