Article Courtesy of Tom Wie, Omnitek
Hackers are now targeting Gmail account holders with a “super realistic AI scam call” that can trick even the most experienced users. Given that there are more than 2.5 billion Gmail users based on Google’s figures, it’s little wonder that hackers are targeting Google’s message platform in increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks.
Sam Mitrovic, a Microsoft solutions consultant, flagged the scam in a recent blog post detailing what happened to him. It started when he received a notification asking him to approve a Gmail account recovery attempt, a pretty common phishing technique intended to send the user to a fake login portal to quietly harvest their credentials. Mitrovic didn’t fall for it and denied the request. About 40 minutes later, he received a notification that he’d missed a call claiming to be from Google Sydney.
Then, a week later, he got another notification request for account recovery approval. Just as before, about 40 minutes after he denied it, he got another call. This time he picked it up, and an American man claiming to be from Google Support was on the line. The man confirmed there was suspicious activity on his Gmail account and claimed an attacker had access to his account for a week and downloaded the account data. Mitrovic said that triggered alarm bells as he remembered
the notification from a week prior.
Hackers are now targeting Gmail account holders with a “super realistic AI scam call” that can trick even the most experienced users. Given that there are more than 2.5 billion Gmail users based on Google’s figures, it’s little wonder that hackers are targeting Google’s message platform in increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks.
“The scams are getting increasingly sophisticated, more convincing and are deployed at ever larger scale,” Mitrovic explained. “People are busy and this scam sounded and looked legitimate enough that I would give them an A for their effort. Many people are likely to fall for it. There are many tools to fight the scammers, however, at an individual level the best tool is still vigilance, doing the basic checks as above or seeking assistance from someone you trust.”
“The scams are getting increasingly sophisticated, more convincing and are deployed at ever larger scale,” Mitrovic explained. “People are busy and this scam sounded and looked legitimate enough that I would give them an A for their effort. Many people are likely to fall for it. There are many tools to fight the scammers, however, at an individual level the best tool is still vigilance, doing the basic checks as above or seeking assistance from someone you trust.”