Cyberattacks: ‘Scammers Now Hiding Phishing Links Behind Images’

A new report by Kasper – sky says its experts discovered a phishing campaign with an unusual attack vector – through an image. This scam targeted organisations in the fields of online retail, distribution, transportation, and logistics.

The cyber attackers aimed to steal corporate email credentials from potential victims. Within the phishing scheme, the cyber attackers send emails in English, allegedly on behalf of a South Korean company.

Pretending to be employees of this organisation, the cybercriminals email about sending instructions to their bank for transferring a payment. They ask potential victims to check the details in the scanned document, which is added to the body of the letter.

According to the legend, this must be done quickly in order to receive payment as soon as possible. “The image in these phishing emails is poorly visible – this is what the attackers are counting on. Even if a person does not expect an email, he may be interested in looking at the details.

However, in reality, the image hides a phishing link. ‘’ says Roman Dedenok, a cybersecurity expert at Kaspersky. ‘If the users click on the scan, they will be redirected to a fake resource that mimics a file sharing service from Adobe. There, they will be asked to enter the credentials for a corporate email account to gain access to the document.

However, this should never be done, otherwise this information will go to the cybercriminals,” Roma added. To avoid becoming a victim of such phishing attacks, Kaspersky recommends that users do not trust emails from unknown mailboxes, especially when it comes to confidential data, financial transactions and suspicious attachments, even if it visually looks like the email came from an organisation with a good reputation.

Kaspersky also recommends that companies install a reliable security solution that will automatically send such emails to spam, and also regularly conduct cybersecurity training for employees, teaching them how to recognise social engineering techniques.

In 2023, Kaspersky participated in 100 independent tests and reviews, with its products being awarded 93 first places, achieving the highest result of all years.

Recall this newspaper reported during the week that African cyberspace faced significant challenges in the first half of 2024, with a startling 37 per cent rise in cyberattacks.

Accordinh to the Chief Solution Officer (CSO), Cybervergent, Gbolabo Awelewa, who analysed the various forms by which the cyber criminals attack their victims, “a staggering 586,130 threats were found by our staff, a 63 per cent increase from Q1.

“New cyber risks surfaced in spite of best efforts, endangering the speed at which businesses and organisations throughout the continent operate. “Leading the attack were trojans called XMRig and Glupteba, which took control of computers and stole private information.

If a company is not well prepared, these sophisticated threats could potentially cause serious harm.” He said Nigeria was facing cybersecurity challenge with the contribution of insider threats, the enemy within the organisation.

He said: “In the first half of 2024, as an organisation, we did hit the gym pretty hard but not alone. Working out along over 100 organisations in the high-stakes world of payments and sensitive data, we focus on building their cyber resilience, helping them stay compliant and avoid getting knocked out by cyber threats.”