This scam is circulating today. The sender is some external compromised account (but could be any).
Whether a scam that would eventually try to extract money or a phish that aims to steal your credentials, our advice remains the same – never answer by email and never open the links – they may contain malware to infect your computer instantly. Our experts open these in dedicated isolated environments.
Another run of Canada post phish.
This phish is quite similar to the below given Canada post phish including the phishing page. Check the following post to spot the phish signs:
This phish is a re-run of the following phish already encountered by UVic:
Check out the above post to learn more about this phish.
This phish tries to convince you to click the link by saying that will keep your email and website safe, but in reality that would achieve the opposite outcome. There are a number of signs that this email is malicious:
As always, hover over the link before clicking on it (or hold down your finger on it if you’re using a mobile device). While you would see a mention of UVic Webmail in the destination address, you would also see that it ends in “.weebly.com”. That means the page is hosted on the Weebly free website builder. Phishers often abuse Weebly and similar services to create phishing pages. A real UVic login page would never be hosted on a free website builder.
If you clicked the link, reach out to the Computer Help Desk or your department’s IT support staff immediately.
This high volume phish has been circulating since last evening. The subject of the phish might vary with different department names. This phish has been observed by other institutes as well:
This phish seems to be a way of spreading fake news. Please don’t respond to this email or forward it to your contacts.
This Canada post impersonation delivery phishes have become common occurrence at UVic. But this morning, UVic users received it in bulk.
It claims to be Canada Post but the email address is not from Canada Post domain. The link in the email is also not hosted on Canada Post domain. The email creates a fake sense of urgency that a package is waiting to be delivered. These types of emails can create curiosity in users to know what package they might have received even if they didn’t order it. The delivery cost demanded is quite low which is to let the user’s guard down and the user might take the risk and visit the link. The phisher’s here are not after the amount but the card information that a user might fill out on the phishing page hosted on the given link which is very good imitation of Canada Post page. (The link was investigated by InfoSec in a locked environment.)
Always think whether you were expecting a delivery or not. It is always best to confirm with the organization mentioned in the email via other means of communication before proceeding any further.
Phishing page:
The shared document phishes can get tricky to spot as the sender email address is a standard Microsoft sharepoint address. Hence, it becomes difficult to find out whether the document shared is phish or not. In such cases, first and the foremost thing is to think if you were expecting such document to be shared, do you know the sender (identified by sender name) if yes then confirm with the sender by other means of communication. If a UVic user will send a shared document from their online sharepoint, then the link will be hosted on ‘https://uvic-my.sharepoint.com/’ which is not the case for the link in this phish email. Always check the link by hovering over the link, never by clicking the link.
This high volume phish has clear phishing signs. The subject is to create a false sense of urgency which is a common tactic used by phishers to lure the users. It has a weird and fake sender name and address. No salutation (means it’s a mass send email). The link given is external which will not be the case if it were to be legit.
Although, this email is visibly phishy but it becomes an issue if there is a coincidence, for example someone was actually facing email issues and gets this email, they might correlate. Hence, it is always best practice to think and look for phishing signs and never be in a hurry. If in doubt, confirm with helpdesk or your DSS.
This phish used a sender display name of “uvic.ca Password” to make it look like this email came from an internal system, but that was fabricated by the phisher. The actual sender address gives away the fact that this really came from an external origin, which is not something that would occur for a real Netlink password reset email.
Besides that, the email text has a lot of the usual red flags. In particular, it creates a false sense of urgency and threatens you with an adverse impact if you don’t act immediately. It also contains quite a few errors and irregularities in grammar, spacing and punctuation.
As always, don’t click the link out of curiosity or to determine whether the email is legitimate. It’s always safer to look at the email for warning signs first, in case there is something nasty on the other side of the link.
If you received this phish, with either of the above subjects, claiming to be from CRA please be cautious and do not click on the link provided. This phish has a usual tactic of phishers to give a too good to be true offer.
Some of the warning signs: Sender name is vague and fake, “Canada”, sender email address is not hosted on CRA domain, generic salutation (CRA know your name beyond just “client”), the link is external to CRA i.e., not hosted on CRA domain.
The best way to confirm such emails is either to call CRA directly or if you have an online account with CRA, sign-in to your CRA account (only on legit CRA website) and check emails or notices in the “Mail” section. Never fall for too good to be true offers, always question the possibility of such offers.
Note: sender address could be different, from the above image, in the phish you may have received.
This phish was received by our organization this morning. Nothing new with this phishing email, the usual tactic asking to update your mailbox.
Phishing signs: external sender asking you to update your UVic mailbox, ‘RE:’ in the subject is to create a fake sense of ongoing email thread, external link (check by hovering over), fake and vague signature, and formatting errors.
Never be in a hurry to click links, always take a moment and think what could make an email, a phish.
This phish, circulating over the weekend, is clear indication that phishers are also humans who make mistakes. It seems this phish was targeted for another university accidentally sent to UVic.
Telltale signs of this phish:
There is no reason for UVic users to click on this link. Please be aware of phishing tactics and try to spot phishing signs before taking the bait of the phishers.
This phish is clearly a scam email. Eventually this email would either go in direction of romance scam where they will ask for your money for different fake reasons or could be inheritance/beneficiary scam where they inherited money and want your help transferring the money. In any case, if indulging in such scam emails will eventually result in one giving up one’s personal or confidential information (such as bank account details), or duped into giving one’s money.
Be aware of such scam emails and never indulge with unknown external senders.
This phish was received by our organization over the weekend. It is a re-run of the phish we received in August:
Please check out the above post to spot the phishing signs.
