People in Nottinghamshire are being warned about a new scam 'fake Whatsapp' scam which is spreading malicious malware. The East Midlands cyber team warned people of the email-based scam ealier this month, which claims to come from the popular messaging service Whatsapp.
Victims are emailed what is seemingly a voice note from an account which presents itself as 'Whatsapp notifier' but is actually a Russian road safety organisation. Crucially, these emails do not show up in the spam folder but land in the inbox, making them seem legitimate.
If a user plays the voice note they will be taken to a website and this could then lead to malware being installed which steals your personal information. Anyone who receives one of these emails is urged not to follow the link to the website and instead disregard it.
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A spokesperson for the East Midlands cyber team said: "The attack starts with an email claiming to be a notification from WhatsApp of a new private voice message. The email contains a creation date and clip duration for the supposed message, and a ‘Play’ button. The identity ‘Whatsapp Notifier’ masks a real email address belonging to a Russian road safety organisation.
"As the address and organisation are real, the messages aren’t flagged as spam or blocked by email security tools. Armorblox, who discovered the scam, believe the Russian organisation is playing a role without realising. The ‘Play’ button will take the email recipient to a website which then asks them to click ‘Allow’ in an allow/block prompt to ‘confirm you are not a robot’. Once ‘allow’ is clicked, the browser will prompt to install software that turns out to be information-stealing malware.
"While there are numerous ‘tells’ that this is a scam, these attacks rely on people missing the signs - perhaps because they are waiting for urgent or exciting news that could well be delivered by a voice message."
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