Ah, the humble fax machine. Just when you thought it was gathering dust in the corner of the office, it’s back in the limelight. But this time, it’s not about sending over a signed contract or an urgent memo. No, it’s about something a bit more… sinister.
Security provider Avanan recently uncovered a new phishing method that combines the old-school charm of faxed PDFs with the modern-day annoyance of CAPTCHA. Yes, you read that right. It’s like a buddy cop movie where the grizzled veteran teams up with the tech-savvy rookie to outsmart the bad guys. Only in this case, they’re the bad guys.
Here’s how it works: the victim opens a document, which redirects them to a page using Google’s reCAPTCHA. This page, pretending to be the OneDrive cloud storage service, then asks for your Microsoft account sign-in information. Sneaky, right?
The beauty (or should we say, the horror) of this method is that it exploits our trust in Google and our familiarity with CAPTCHA. Plus, the fact that faxed PDF files stored in the cloud are not a common sight in many offices adds to the confusion.
So, what’s the moral of the story? Never underestimate the power of the fax machine, folks. It’s been around for a while, and it’s not going anywhere soon. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget to always check the URL and be a bit more suspicious of those CAPTCHA queries. After all, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Remember, even in the age of high-speed internet and cloud storage, the fax machine still has a few tricks up its sleeve. And as for CAPTCHA, well, it’s just doing what it does best: being a pain in the neck.
