UMBC Staff Impersonation Phishing Scam
A Persistent Scam
DoIT has been notified of a phishing scam where the malicious actor was trying to impersonate a UMBC staffer. Below is an example of the email with the name, the email address of the sender, and the signature of the email removed for privacy reasons.
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 From: FORGED NAME <.edu@gmail.com> To: @umbc.edu Subject: QUICK REQUEST Are You Available?? -- |
This and other similar phishing attempts seem to target certain departments of UMBC by trying to impersonate one of the staffers in that department. In previous cases of similar scams, if the user responds, the malicious actor could ask the user to send them money in the form of iTunes cards, gift cards, prepaid debit cards, money order, or even bitcoin.
In the case above, note that the scammer sent their email from a gmail and not a UMBC email. The email also tries to trick users by having “.edu” before the @gmail.
The scammer also tried to make the email look as legitimate as possible by putting an email signature that was meant to look similar to those the persons they were impersonating. The scammer also created a sense of urgency by having the email subject be in all caps and say “QUICK REQUEST.”
If you do receive this or a similar email that you suspect is a scam, please do not click on any URL or reply. Either of those actions confirms to the sender that your email address is valid. Please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu.
How do I forward full email headers?
https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970
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Posted: August 13, 2020, 4:44 PM