Happy 2025 to everyone in our SHASS IT Community!
It’s January 2nd and we have our first SHASS IT Alert of the year.
Bad actors are using Google support forms to create notices to intended victims that impersonate Google Support. Sometimes these notices are accompanied by social engineering phone calls by the same bad actors in an attempt to legitimize the fake Google email Support notices. These communications usually involve a false narrative of Google tracking unauthorized usage of the victims’ account, usually from an overseas country like Germany or the UK.
Users are subsequently tricked into surrendering actual access to their Google accounts by clicking on a link or typing in their password. The victims’ Google accounts are then immediately data mined by the bad actors. In the highest profile cases involving this Google Support impersonation attack, passwords to cryptocurrency wallets were stolen once access to the victims’ Google accounts were successfully attained.
If you receive any email notices purportedly from Google Support, delete them. Do not click on anything, do not agree to do or give whatever the email is asking.
If you receive any phone calls purportedly from Google Support, hang up. If you are concerned there might be an actual issue with your Google account, directly call or email Google Support on their publicly published points of contact to inquire whether there is an actual issue with your Google account.
In either or both cases, users should initiate contact with Google directly, either by phone or actual Goggle Support, to see if there are any real or actual issues with their account.
For more details, this notice is also published here on the News portion of the SHASS IT Website with linked references below. Updated information will be added as it becomes available.
References:
https://boingboing.net/2024/12/20/father-of-2-young-boys-loses-5-million-after-falling-for-terrifying-new-google-scam.html
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/12/how-to-lose-a-fortune-with-just-one-bad-click/