Facebook Messenger has been hit by a large-scale rip-off marketing campaign that was detected by Group-IB, a world menace searching, and adversary-centric cyber intelligence firm. Group-IB Digital Risk Protection (DRP) analysts have discovered proof proving that Messenger users in over 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the MEA area, North and South America may need been affected, the corporate stated in a launch.
“By distributing ads promoting an allegedly updated version of Facebook Messenger, cybercriminals harvested users` login credentials,” the corporate stated.
The cyber intelligence firm has came upon that nearly 1,000 faux Facebook accounts are distributing hyperlinks to an allegedly up to date model of Facebook Messenger.Â
And Messenger users who adopted the hyperlink would then be redirected to a faux Facebook Messenger web site with a login kind, by way of which cybercriminals harvested users` credentials.
According to the intelligence firm, scammers used official Facebook logos and shortened hyperlink names that resembled the actual ones. Group-IB stated that the social media big itself has nothing to do with the scheme.
The scale of the rip-off has grown considerably over the previous a number of months, the corporate famous. As of April, the investigative staff discovered 5,600 Facebook posts inviting users to put in the faux “latest Messenger update,” Sputnik reported.
Group-IB`s DRP analysts have discovered rip-off advertisements focused at users in at the very least 84 countries worldwide, together with Canada, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Africa.
Users who fell sufferer to this scheme danger leaking their private information and have their account hijacked, the corporate stated.
“Scammers, in turn, are likely to use the compromised account to either blackmail the victim, pushing them to pay a ransom to have access to their account restored, or further scale up the scheme using the Facebook profile to distribute scam ads,” the discharge stated.
Â
#mute
