A new Stripe phishing campaign has been detected that uses fake warnings advising users about an invalid account to lure people into divulging their credentials and bank account information.
Stripe is an online payment processor used by many online firms on their e-commerce websites to accept payments from their customers. As such, the company is perfect for spoofing as many people will be aware that the company processes payments and will think it reasonable that they need to provide credentials and bank account information to ensure payments are processed.
The scam starts with a phishing email supposedly from the Stripe Support department. The email advises the customer that the information associated with their account is currently invalid. The message is sent as a courtesy notice warning the user that their account will be placed on hold until the matter is corrected. The user is asked to review their details to correct the issue. A button is included in the email for users to click to do this.
The emails contain spelling mistakes and questionable grammar, so are likely to be identified as suspect by vigilant individuals. Security awareness training often teaches employees to hover their mouse arrow over a hyperlink to find out the true URL, but in this campaign it will not work. The attackers have added a title to the HTML tag of the embedded hyperlink so when the mouse arrow is hovered over the “Review your Details” button, that text will be displayed instead of the URL.
If that button is clicked, the user will be directed to a seemingly legitimate Stripe login page. The login box is a clone of the real login page and a series of boxes will be displayed, each requiring different information to be entered, including bank account and contact information.
When the user is required to enter their password, regardless of what is typed, the user will be advised that they have entered an incorrect password and will be asked to enter the password again. The user is then directed to the legitimate Stripe login page to make it appear they have been on the correct Stripe website all along.
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Similar tactics are used in countless other phishing campaigns targeting other well-known companies. The presence of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in messages should tip off end users that the email is a phishing attempt, but all too often end users fail to notice these errors and click and divulge sensitive information.
One issue is a lack of cybersecurity training in the workplace. If employees are not trained how to identify phishing emails, it is inevitable that some will end up falling for these scams and will divulge their credentials. Those credentials can be used to gain access to bank accounts or email accounts, with the latter often used to conduct further phishing attacks on the organization. One email account breach can easily lead to dozens of breached accounts.
For example, a phishing attack on a U.S. healthcare provider started with a single phishing email and led to 73 email accounts being compromised. As for cybersecurity awareness training, this is often nonexistent. One recent study on 2,000 employees in the United Kingdom revealed three quarters had received no workplace cybersecurity training whatsoever.
Protected by Microsoft Office 365 Anti-Phishing Controls? Are You Sure?
One in every 99 emails is a phishing email, so it is important to ensure your defenses are capable of blocking those messages. Many businesses mistakenly believe they are protected against these emails by Microsoft’s Office 365 anti-phishing controls. While those measures do block spam email and some phishing messages, one recent study by Avanan has shown 25% of phishing attacks sneak past Office 365 defenses and are delivered to inboxes. For an average firm that means several phishing emails will reach end users’ inboxes every day. To ensure your business is protected against phishing attacks, additional anti-phishing controls are required on top of Office 365.
Businesses can protect their Office 365 accounts against phishing by layering SpamTitan on top of Office 365. SpamTitan is an advanced anti-phishing and anti-malware solution that provides superior protection against phishing, malware, spear phishing, and zero-day attacks.
Heuristics rules are used to analyze message headers and these rules are constantly updated to include the latest threats. Bayesian analysis and heuristics are used to check message content, and along with machine learning techniques, new threats are blocked and prevented from reaching inboxes. Sandboxing is also used to assess email attachments for malicious code used to install malware in addition to dual-AV engines that scan for known malware.
These advanced measures ensure that Office 365 inboxes are kept free from malware and phishing emails. These advanced capabilities along with the ease of implementation and use and industry-leading customer support are why SpamTitan is the leading provider of anti-spam and anti-phishing solutions for SMBs and managed service providers that serve the SMB market.
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