The Black Lives Matter movement, which has also gained momentum in Italy following a wave of international solidarity with the events in Minneapolis, seems to have come under the crosshairs of several “criminal hackers”, who, as often happens, leverage the impact of main news stories for launching very extensive and dangerous malware campaigns.
Malware online: all the information
A study on cyber crime carried out in Switzerland in recent weeks, in fact, highlights a real surge in phishing attacks (carried out by sending fraudulent emails) around the world, which generally come in the form of fake questionnaires and surveys on the movement generated by the protests in America.
The incriminated messages would exploit the emotional wave generated by the news on Black Lives Matter by including attachments that invite users to “enable attachment contents”, which actually hide DLL-type files that can bring unwanted changes to the operating system in use. One of them would have been identified as TrickBot, a series of malware that has been sowing panic in banking security since 2016.
TrickBot , in fact, was born as a “perfect” solution to the theft of credentials and sensitive data, being able to provide cyber criminals with a complete overview of the user’s activity, while at the same time acting as an installation vector for other computer threats.
Black Lives Matter thus turns out to be another opportunity, unfortunately, for the exploitation of important news items in order to leverage the curiosity and good faith of users interested in contributing to the cause.
How to protect yourself is a legitimate question: a few months ago we witnessed the launch of a very similar malware campaign, but with a COVID-19 theme: we can defend ourselves by adopting the same security measures, i.e. avoiding opening / replying messages from institutions or alleged foundations that include keywords such as “George Floyd”, “Black Lives Matter” requesting opinions or donations not actually authorized by any official body.
