Malware attack starts with a fake customer-service call
Hotel and restaurant chains, beware. A notorious cybercriminal gang is tricking businesses into installing malware by calling their customer services representatives and convincing them to open malicious email attachments.
The culprits in these hacks, which are designed to steal customers’ credit card numbers, appear to be the Carbanak gang, a group that was blamed last year for stealing as much as $1 billion from various banks.
On Monday, security firm Trustwave said that three of its clients in the past month had encountered malware built with coding found in previous Carbanak attacks. This particular campaign has been preying on the hospitality industry, said Brian Hussey, Trustwave’s global director of incident response. The hackers start by calling a business’s customer service line and pretending to be clients who can’t access the online reservation system.
