Recently a department of United States Justice has warned its civilians against threat actors who are imitating state workforce agencies (SWAs) in order to hack Americans’ sensible credentials and other important data.
A press release has been released on 5th March; it reported that the department has received informative reports on the cyber attacks. Further, it added that there were certain threat actors who were mimicking real websites which looked like those genuinely belonging to the state workforce agencies (SWAs).
The entire purpose of this attack is to pursue users into believing that they are actually applying for unemployment benefits and submitting their information and other sensitive credentials on the right platform.
However, after collecting identifiable data of consumers’ hackers use this information for their private advantages such as to commit theft. While doing so, threat criminals usually send spam messages and emails with a link to a spoofed SWA website in order to make victims access these fake websites.
“Unless from a known and verified source, consumers should never click on links in text messages or emails claiming to be from an SWA offering the opportunity to apply for unemployment insurance benefits,” said the department.
Department further added that anyone who wants to submit their application for unemployment benefits should directly go to an official SWA website. Around 10 million people in the USA who are trying to take unemployment benefits are also advised that they should watch out for phishing attacks and do not take any communications they receive at face value.
“Carefully examine any message purporting to be from a company and do not click on a link in an unsolicited email or text message. Remember that companies generally do not contact you to ask for your username or password,” said the department.
Officers said, if you find yourself being unsure about any messages whether the entity sending the email is authentic or not, you must be contacting the department of the National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) and report the communication but you must not rely on any contact information given in the fraudulent messages.
