Gogole docs phoishing8/9/2023 ![]() They close by claiming that they briefed Google on their findings on January 4 but thus far the vulnerability has not been fixed. They also note that to avoid falling victim to such an attack, users need only refrain from clicking on links embedded in emails sent from Google Docs. On mobile, the scam uses the collaboration feature in Google Drive to generate a notification inviting people to. The scariest part about this Google Docs scam is that the emails and notifications it generates come directly from Google. The team at Avanan reports that thus far, most attacks have involved Outlook but note it could work equally well for virtually any email system. The phishing scam itself is nothing new which is to get you to click on a link within a message. To make matters worse, the attacker does not even have to share the document-just putting a victim's address in a comment gets the job done. If you havent seen the news alerts, there is a unique phishing attack going viral today exploiting Google Docs. Notably, victims do not even have to open a Google Docs document to be targeted because they are targeted by what appears to be a friendly email message. The same feature also allows the email to sneak its way through spam filters. And because the email comes from Google, users trust that it is legitimate. The hack works because the email that is sent does not show the hackers' email address-just a name they designate. The symbol automatically alerts the system to send an email to the person designated in the email address-the email that is sent has phishing links in it, sending the user to a webpage that could lead to malicious code. In May 2017, a phishing attack now known as the Google Docs worm spread across the internet. The hacking approach is both simple and straightforward-a hacker creates a Google Docs document and adds comments to it that include an symbol followed by an email address. They further claim that the vulnerability was not fixed by Google and because of that they began seeing hackers taking advantage of the vulnerability last month. The purpose of the scam, and the culprits behind it. Then, this past October, they discovered that hackers had found another way to send phishing links to unsuspecting users, using the comment feature. Attackers are using a new technique to exploit Google Docs for phishing attacks, according to researchers at Avanan. A phishing scam that tricked people with what appeared to be Google Docs links was doused by the internet giant after spreading wildly. If you are an Applied Tech customer and you or a member of your team believe they have clicked the Google docs link, please reach out to Applied Tech right away.The team at Avanan claims that they found an earlier exploit in Google Docs last June-one that allowed hackers to send phishing links to users. Doing that will help ensure that, even if hackers do trick you out of your password, they will likely be unable to use it. If you haven’t already, make sure you have two-factor authentication set up on your Google accounts. The countermeasures Google described are likely to stop the spread of the attack, but as one security expert noted, the attacker has already had time to harvest million of email addresses via victims’ Gmail contact lists.īut there is a very good way to protect yourself. Google said users who clicked the email can check their accounts for a breach though. Google said it has a team working to prevent similar account “spoofing” from happening again. “We’ve removed the fake pages, pushed updates through Safe Browsing,” Google tweeted. In a statement, Google said it’s taken action to protect users against the attacks and disabled offending accounts. Google Docs said in a tweet Wednesday afternoon that it’s investigating the phishing messages, and it encouraged users to not click it and report it to Gmail. One of the giveaways is the subject line is garbled and the email may come from an unexpected source or contact. Once someone clicks on the link, which in some cases appears in a blue box with the words “Open in Docs,” it will attempt to hijack the user’s account and can send the link to the user’s email contacts, too, perpetuating the problem. ![]() An email phishing scam luring people to click on a malicious link has resurfaced.īusinesses, schools, individuals and others have been hit with a phishing email that asks users to click on a Google Doc. ![]()
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