Itโs that time of year again โ tax season! Whether youโve already filed in the hopes of an early refund or have yet to start the process, one thing is for sure: cybercriminals will certainly use tax season as a means to get victims to give up their personal and financial information. This time of year is advantageous for malicious actors since the IRS and tax preparers are some of the few people who actually need your personal data. As a result, consumers are targeted with various scams impersonating trusted sources like the IRS or DIY tax software companies. Fortunately, every year theย IRS outlines the most prevalent tax scams, such as voice phishing, email phishing, and fake tax software scams. Letโs explore the details of these threats.
So, how do cybercriminals use voice phishing to impersonate the IRS?ย Voice phishing, a form of criminal phone fraud, uses social engineering tactics to gain access to victimsโ personal and financial information. For tax scams, criminals will make unsolicited calls posing as the IRS and leave voicemails requesting an immediate callback. The crooks will then demand that the victim pay a phony tax bill in the form of a wire transfer, prepaid debit card or gift card. In one case outlined byย Forbes, victims received emails in their inbox that allegedly contained voicemails from the IRS. The emails didnโt actually contain any voicemails but instead directed victims to a suspicious SharePoint URL. Last year, a number of SharePoint phishing scams occurred as an attempt to steal Office 365 credentials, so itโs not surprising that cybercriminals are using this technique to access taxpayersโ personal data now as well.
In addition to voice phishing schemes, malicious actors are also using email to try and get consumers to give up their personal and financial information. This year alone, almost 400 IRS phishing URLs have been reported.ย In a typical email phishing scheme, scammers try to obtain personal tax information like usernames and passwords by using spoofed email addresses and stolen logos. In many cases, the emails contain suspicious hyperlinks that redirect users to a fake site or PDF attachments that may download malware or viruses. If a victim clicks on these malicious links or attachments, they can seriously endanger their tax data by giving identity thieves the opportunity to steal their refund. Whatโs more, cybercriminals are also using subject lines like โIRS Important Noticeโ and โIRS Taxpayer Noticeโ and demanding payment or threatening to seize the victimโs tax refund.
Cybercriminals are even going so far as toย impersonate trusted brands like TurboTax for their scams. In this case, DIY tax preparers who search for TurboTax software on Google are shown ads for pirated versions of TurboTax. The victims will pay a fee for the software via PayPal, only to have their computer infected with malware after downloading the software. You may be wondering, how do victims happen upon this malicious software through a simple Google search? Unfortunately, scammers have been paying to have their spoofed sites show up in search results, increasing the chances that an innocent taxpayer will fall victim to their scheme.
Money is a prime motivator for many consumers, and malicious actors are fully prepared to exploit this. Many people are concerned about how much they might owe or are predicting how much theyโll get back on their tax refund, and scammers play to both of these emotions. So, as hundreds of taxpayers are waiting for a potential tax return, itโs important that theyย navigate tax season wisely. Check out the following tips to avoid being spoofed by cybercriminals and identity thieves:
File before cybercriminals do it for you. The easiest defense you can take against tax season schemes is to get your hands on your W-2 and file as soon as possible. The more prompt you are to file, the less likely your data will be raked in by a cybercriminal.
Keep an eye on your credit and your identity. Keeping tabs on your credit report and knowing if your personal information has been compromised in some way can help prevent tax fraud. Together, they can let you know if someone has stolen your identity or if you have personal info on the dark web that could lead to identity theft.
Watch out for spoofed websites. Scammers have extremely sophisticated tools that help disguise phony web addresses for DIY tax software, such as stolen company logos and site designs. To avoid falling for this, go directly to the source. Type the address of a website directly into the address bar of your browser instead of following a link from an email or internet search. If you receive any suspicious links in your email, investigating the domain is usually a good way to tell if the source is legitimate or not.
Protect yourself from scam messages. Scammers also send links to scam sites via texts, social media messages, and email. McAfee Scam Protection can help you spot if the message you got is a fake. It uses AI technology that automatically detects links to scam URLs. If you accidentally click, donโt worry, it can block risky sites if you do.
Clean up your personal info online. Crooks and scammers have to find you before they can contact you. After all, they need to get your phone number or email from somewhere. Sometimes, thatโs from โpeople finderโ and online data brokers that gather and sell personal info to any buyer. Including crooks. McAfee Personal Data Cleanup can remove your personal info from the data broker sites scammers use to contact their victims.
Consider an identity theft protection solution. If for some reason your personal data does become compromised, be sure to use an identity theft solution such as McAfee Identity Theft Protection, which allows users to take a proactive approach to protect their identities with personal and financial monitoring and recovery tools to help keep their identities personal and secured.
The post How to Steer Clear of Tax Season Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.
drozer (formerly Mercury) is the leading security testing framework for Android.
drozer allows you to search for security vulnerabilities in apps and devices by assuming the role of an app and interacting with the Dalvik VM, other apps' IPC endpoints and the underlying OS.
drozer provides tools to help you use, share and understand public Android exploits. It helps you to deploy a drozer Agent to a device through exploitation or social engineering. Using weasel (WithSecure's advanced exploitation payload) drozer is able to maximise the permissions available to it by installing a full agent, injecting a limited agent into a running process, or connecting a reverse shell to act as a Remote Access Tool (RAT).
drozer is a good tool for simulating a rogue application. A penetration tester does not have to develop an app with custom code to interface with a specific content provider. Instead, drozer can be used with little to no programming experience required to show the impact of letting certain components be exported on a device.
drozer is open source software, maintained by WithSecure, and can be downloaded from: https://labs.withsecure.com/tools/drozer/
To help with making sure drozer can be run on modern systems, a Docker container was created that has a working build of Drozer. This is currently the recommended method of using Drozer on modern systems.
Note: On Windows please ensure that the path to the Python installation and the Scripts folder under the Python installation are added to the PATH environment variable.
Note: On Windows please ensure that the path to javac.exe is added to the PATH environment variable.
git clone https://github.com/WithSecureLabs/drozer.git
cd drozer
python setup.py bdist_wheel
sudo pip install dist/drozer-2.x.x-py2-none-any.whl
git clone https://github.com/WithSecureLabs/drozer.git
cd drozer
make deb
sudo dpkg -i drozer-2.x.x.deb
git clone https://github.com/WithSecureLabs/drozer.git
cd drozer
make rpm
sudo rpm -I drozer-2.x.x-1.noarch.rpm
NOTE: Windows Defender and other Antivirus software will flag drozer as malware (an exploitation tool without exploit code wouldn't be much fun!). In order to run drozer you would have to add an exception to Windows Defender and any antivirus software. Alternatively, we recommend running drozer in a Windows/Linux VM.
git clone https://github.com/WithSecureLabs/drozer.git
cd drozer
python.exe setup.py bdist_msi
Run dist/drozer-2.x.x.win-x.msi
Drozer can be installed using Android Debug Bridge (adb).
Download the latest Drozer Agent here.
$ adb install drozer-agent-2.x.x.apk
You should now have the drozer Console installed on your PC, and the Agent running on your test device. Now, you need to connect the two and you're ready to start exploring.
We will use the server embedded in the drozer Agent to do this.
If using the Android emulator, you need to set up a suitable port forward so that your PC can connect to a TCP socket opened by the Agent inside the emulator, or on the device. By default, drozer uses port 31415:
$ adb forward tcp:31415 tcp:31415
Now, launch the Agent, select the "Embedded Server" option and tap "Enable" to start the server. You should see a notification that the server has started.
Then, on your PC, connect using the drozer Console:
On Linux:
$ drozer console connect
On Windows:
> drozer.bat console connect
If using a real device, the IP address of the device on the network must be specified:
On Linux:
$ drozer console connect --server 192.168.0.10
On Windows:
> drozer.bat console connect --server 192.168.0.10
You should be presented with a drozer command prompt:
selecting f75640f67144d9a3 (unknown sdk 4.1.1)
dz>
The prompt confirms the Android ID of the device you have connected to, along with the manufacturer, model and Android software version.
You are now ready to start exploring the device.
Command | Description |
---|---|
run | Executes a drozer module |
list | Show a list of all drozer modules that can be executed in the current session. This hides modules that you do not have suitable permissions to run. |
shell | Start an interactive Linux shell on the device, in the context of the Agent process. |
cd | Mounts a particular namespace as the root of session, to avoid having to repeatedly type the full name of a module. |
clean | Remove temporary files stored by drozer on the Android device. |
contributors | Displays a list of people who have contributed to the drozer framework and modules in use on your system. |
echo | Print text to the console. |
exit | Terminate the drozer session. |
help | Display help about a particular command or module. |
load | Load a file containing drozer commands, and execute them in sequence. |
module | Find and install additional drozer modules from the Internet. |
permissions | Display a list of the permissions granted to the drozer Agent. |
set | Store a value in a variable that will be passed as an environment variable to any Linux shells spawned by drozer. |
unset | Remove a named variable that drozer passes to any Linux shells that it spawns. |
drozer is released under a 3-clause BSD License. See LICENSE for full details.
drozer is Open Source software, made great by contributions from the community.
Bug reports, feature requests, comments and questions can be submitted here.