ESET Ireland

ESET Ireland looks at a few recent cyber threats arriving by mail in recent weeks, ranging from Tesco Bank phishing to a secret ‘Hungarian admirer’.

It’s a numbers game that the cybercriminals are playing. Send out enough spam and a certain percentage of victims will click. So, week after week, we’re seeing new scams or new variations on old scams. The past weeks were no exception.

A long an elaborate letter pretended to have come from Tesco Bank credit card team. It read

And then they’d kindly steal your log in details and try to log into your account to take your money.

Bank of Ireland is always a popular name to abuse, and we’ve seen two phishing variations recently. One claims:

And clicking on it, of course, does everything but protect you, attempting pretty much the same as the one above. The other one was even simpler, but unfortunately, not less effective:

As curiosity tends to get the better of people, a “new message in the inbox” is a good lure to get people clicking.

The last one is a bit of a curiosity, as it compliments, insults and tries to harm the victim, all at once:

The email comes from a Hungarian email address, but the link leads to a site on a Mongolian domain, that tries to infect you with malware.

ESET Ireland recommends you avoid clicking on any links in such emails and do not open attachments, as they may contain malware that can end up installing ransomware, or can lead to phishing or scamming websites.

by Urban Schrott, ESET Ireland and
Ciaran McHale, ESET Ireland