UI Cautions about Phishing Electronic Mail from President

Officials of University of Illinois (UI) have issued an alert regarding one fake e-mail that is supposedly from Timothy Killeen, President of UI while being crafted for a phishing attack. When fraudsters distribute fake e-mails posing as messages from reputable organizations the practice is referred to as 'phishing.' Phishing e-mails try to trick recipients into disclosing personal information, in particular, credit card details or passwords. In the UI phishing attack, the fake e-mail was distributed among more than 1,200 people sometime at 10a.m on January 17, 2017. The university's Technology Services warned on twitter that recipients of the e-mail mustn't open the embedded file attached while forward the message at report-spam@illinois.edu before deleting it for good.

Addressing recipients as "Dear Colleagues" the e-mail requests recipients to go through the attachment to get crucial information from UI's president. The technology services department of UI said they weren't certain as to whom the e-mail targeted; however, was sure the purpose of distributing it was to garner personal information. It didn't seem as containing viruses although the attached PDF file led users onto certain website asking for a login, and that was one major red flag. The News Gazette posted this online dated January 18, 2017.

If the attachment is clicked it takes users onto one website telling about one document that they must review. Instantly, users will hopefully perceive the odd thing in the whole matter i.e. an attempt for stealing innocent individuals' usernames and passwords.

When any end-user logs in, there pops up one window showing the code-of-conduct of University of California-Berkeley. This implies the scam wasn't just targeting UI. Moreover, the fraudsters obviously made the initiative for knowing the UI president's name and activity so tried to make the e-mail appear as arriving from him.

The university has taken precaution by blocking the PCs shared on UI network from accessing the online site thereby preventing theft of UI inmates' credentials. However, it's being cautioned that even if anybody checks e-mail over phone or from his home PC which is not shared on the university network he can still get trapped.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/23/2017