Phishing emails which appeared to be “legitimate University emails” were brought to the attention of the Enterprise Information Technology Services. An ArchNews email was sent in warning – this scam could be used to gain private information.
EITS was alerted to the two emails by an abuse notice sent to the Security Operations Center, and by the fact that it showed up on a few EITS and computer related mailing lists, said Laura Heilman, the security awareness training and education manager for EITS.
“Phishing emails are emails where an unauthorized individual, usually a criminal or somebody who is trying to scam you, sends out what looks like it could possibly be an authentic email, and they are basically trying to lure you into giving some personal information,” Heilman said.
The warning email might not have prevented everyone from falling victim to the scam.
“Since the SOC people were able to get a hold of it, they were able to block people who were on campus from going to that link [included in the email],” Heilman said. “Unfortunately that means that any one not on campus may have responded to it.”
There is no way to be sure how many people received the email..
“I don’t know exactly how many recipients we have on this one,” said Heilman. “Easily dozens, perhaps hundreds.”
Heilman said that one of recent emails originated from an address that looked like it was part of the UGA system and included aspects, such as a return address for a “UGA IT Help Desk,” that looked legitimate. With a closer look, were clearly fake, since UGA has an EITS Help Desk instead of an IT Help Desk, Heilman said.
The email also took information right from the EITS website to sound more realistic.
“The policy on the use of computers is our webpage, and if you go to that webpage, it’s Section 1.0. They cut and pasted it directly,” said Heilman, “It’s our language entirely. . . It sounds legitimate. It gives it credence.”
The EITS website about phishing, a link that was included in the email alert that was sent out, says that people should look for grammar errors and call for immediate action. These common characteristics, Heilman said, are not aspects of this email, though the call for action is implied.
One characteristic that was true was that the email did not have a greeting.
“Literally millions of these things do not make it through [spam filters],” said Heilman, “and I suspect that one of the only reasons that this particular phishing attack made it through is because it looks like it came from an internal address. And I tell you, it is going to continue to grow as a problem.”
Two student workers at the EITS Help Desk, who had fallen into phishing scams before, said the recent one was very realistic looking.
“Usually they’re really bad – the phishing scams are really obvious – but that one was really good,” said Ashtyn Warner, a second-year computer science and graphic design major.
De’Von Fitts, a fourth-year MIST major, said he fell for this recent phishing scam because it looked so much like something UGA would send out.
“When they have the abilities, like the recent one, to make everything look legit, that is when you are susceptible to fall into that trap,” Fitts said.