Phishing Campaigns

Tips for this Month

• One of the more common signs of a phishing email is bad spelling and incorrect use of grammar ( Games was spelled "Garnes"
• Investigate the email address itself. In this case, the email address ends with safemessaging.org
• In cases where you did not initiate the interaction to receive invitations, marketing materials, or newsletters, there is a higher probability that the email is suspect.
• This was sent out at the same time as many fantasy football leagues were kicking off.
• An indicator of a potentiality fraudulent email is when all links in a message lead to the same "phishing" URL or address: in this case safemessaging.org

Tips for this Month

Don’t trust an email just because it looks familiar. This month’s phish was a bit tricky as the UW -System institutions are big users of Teams and we often click things that seem familiar. It may seem unfair, but that is what the bad actors do. Bad actors often use Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Amazon and other common brands and services to gain trust.

While the email looked pretty good, as they often do, both Teams and Microsoft was misspelled in the subject line. But please don’t count on misspellings. The bad guys often have copy editors these days.

This message also adds a sense of urgency as it was sent just after the close of FY22 and it notes delinquencies.

The reply to address was no-reply@network-support.us. This is clearly not a Stout or UW system address. A good indicator of a phish.

Tips for this Month

Be wary of any email demanding action. They are quite often fraudulent. Covid has been a focus of fraudsters for the past two years. Wisconsin residents have reported over 9,000 complaints of fraud related to the Covid pandemic to the Federal Trade Commission. Nearly half of the reported fraud resulted in financial loss. This amounted to $8.22 million dollars in losses reported by Wisconsin residents alone!

1. The sender's email address had a spelling error in the domain. @micrsoftalerts.com

2. Tip: If you did not attach a service to your account or make a purchase through a service, you can safely assume it is a phish or scam. Even if it is a service you do use.

1. The April campaign was aligned with current events. They will use current events to make the emails appear relevant. 

2. April’s phish included an additional step where users could have entered their twitter credentials.

Note: Technical issues prevented over 2/3 of the phishing email from being delivered. Approximately 700 emails went through. However, if you extrapolate based on the numbers, we would still be under 1% if all email had gotten through.

March 2022 Phishing Email Example

1. The March campaign was aligned with the tax season which is what many phishing experts will do. They will use current events to make the emails appear relevant.

2. The display email used was from an unfamiliar email account and not associated with a UW email address or with your personal tax company.

3. There was a "Call to Action" message. "Your ability to e-file will be disabled" statement demanded your response.