Email phishing attacks impersonating Linkedin have increased by 232% since February 1 2022, according to Egress.
The cybersecurity vendor said this surge is linked to the so-called ‘Great Resignation,’ in which record numbers of employees are leaving their jobs and searching for new opportunities amid the COVID-19 crisis. For example, a record number of Americans left their jobs in 2021 for new opportunities.
Vast numbers of job seekers use LinkedIn to find and apply for new positions, and the researchers revealed that cyber-attackers are increasingly leveraging the professional social networking site to socially engineer victims into clicking on phishing links and then entering their credentials into fraudulent websites.
The sophisticated attacks all follow a similar pattern – using webmail addresses with a LinkedIn display name – while the phishing emails are sent from separate webmail accounts that have zero correlation to each other. They also use subject lines similar to those used by the social networking site, including: ‘You appeared in 4 searches this week,’ ‘You have 1 new message,’ ‘Your profile matches this job’ and ‘Who’s searching for you online.’ Read more: https://cutt.ly/IPlyzOW