Amazon buyers are being targeted by clever scammers that either set up independent seller accounts or hijack those of already established , well-reputed sellers , then offer pricy items at unbeatable prices . In an example offered by Comparitech ’ s Lee Munson , the item in question is a big LCD TV that is usually sold at around £2,300 , but the scammer offers it at almost half the price for a “ used – like new ” item . But when the potential victim tries to buy it , Amazon throws up an error , saying that there was a problem with the item in the order . A determined buyer will try to contact the seller through Amazon ’ s in-house messaging system , but the seller will push to move the conversation off it by offering a contact email address . Munson ’ s email exchange with the scammer shows that the latter insists that by contacting them directly the problem has been solved , and that an order confirmation will be sent to the buyers ’ email address . The order confirmation looks like Attack.Phishing it came from Attack.Phishing Amazon ( it appears to come from Attack.Phishing the auto-confirm @ amazon-payments-support.co.uk email address ) , but was in fact sent Attack.Phishing by the scammer . The order instructs Attack.Phishing the user to pay via direct bank transfer , to a private bank account – seemingly through Amazon Payments , but actually not . Once the victims make the payment in the way they have been instructed , it ’ s game over . They have parted with their money , and Amazon won ’ t refund them as the payment hasn ’ t been effected through their payment system . “ Payment within the Amazon.co.uk site is the only authorised and recognised form of payment for items sold by Sellers on Amazon.co.uk . Every customer who orders on Amazon.co.uk is covered by our A-to-z guarantee ; however items paid for outside of the Amazon.co.uk Marketplace aren ’ t eligible for protection , ” the company noted , and advised customers to report this type of sellers to them . But even that is not enough to stop these scammers , and they set up new accounts almost immediately after old ones have been blocked , as evidenced in this post on a Kindle Help Forum . Obviously , Amazon must find a way to spot these schemes and take these accounts down much sooner

Researchers said good social engineering and users ’ trust in the convenience afforded by the OAUTH mechanism guaranteed Wednesday ’ s Google Docs phishing attacks Attack.Phishing would spread quickly . Google said that up to 1 million Gmail users were victimized by yesterday ’ s Google Docs phishing scam Attack.Phishing that spread quickly for a short period of time . In a statement , Google said that fewer than 0.1 percent of Gmail users were affected ; as of last February , Google said it had one billion active Gmail users . Google took measures to protect its users by disabling offending accounts , and removing phony pages and malicious applications involved in the attacks . Other security measures were pushed out in updates to Gmail , Safe Browsing and other in-house systems . “ We were able to stop the campaign within approximately one hour , ” a Google spokesperson said in a statement . “ While contact information was accessed Attack.Databreach and used by the campaign , our investigations show that no other data was exposed Attack.Databreach . There ’ s no further action users need to take regarding this event. ” The messages were a convincing Attack.Phishing mix of social engineering and abuse of users ’ trust in the convenience of mechanisms that share account access with third parties . Many of the phishing messages came from Attack.Phishing contacts known to victims since part of the attack includes gaining access to contact lists . The messages claimed Attack.Phishing that someone wanted to share a Google Doc with the victim , and once the “ Open in Docs ” button in the email is clicked , the victim is redirected Attack.Phishing to a legitimate Google OAUTH consent screen where the attacker ’ s application , called “ Google Docs ” asks for access to victim ’ s Gmail and contacts through Google ’ s OAUTH2 service implementation . While the ruse was convincing Attack.Phishing in its simplicity , there were a number of red flags , including the fact that a Google service was asking for access to Gmail , and that the “ To ” address field was to an odd Mailinator account . Google also quickly updated Safe Browsing and Gmail with warnings about the phishing emails and attempts to steal Attack.Databreach personal information . The phishing emails spread Attack.Phishing quickly on Wednesday and likely started with journalists and public relations professionals , each of whom are likely to have lengthy contact lists ensuring the messages would continue to spread Attack.Phishing in an old-school worm-like fashion . OAUTH ’ s open nature allows anyone to develop similar apps . The nature of the standard and interaction involved makes it difficult to safely ask for permission without giving the users a lot of information to validate whether an app is malicious , said Duo ’ s Sokley . “ There are many pitfalls in implementing OAUTH 2.0 , for example cross site request forgery protection ( XSRF ) . Imagine if the user doesn ’ t have to click on the approve button , but if the exploit would have done this for you , ” said SANS ’ Ullrich . “ OAUTH 2.0 also inherits all the security issues that come with running anything in a web browser . A user may have multiple windows open at a time , the URL bar isn ’ t always very visible and browser give applications a lot of leeway in styling the user interface to confuse the user . ”

GreatHorn analyzed more than 56 million emails from 91,500 corporate mailboxes from March to November 2016 . The data found that display name spoofs are the clear phishing weapon of choice for cybercriminals . Attackers are increasingly relying on highly targeted , non-payload attacks that exploit trust and leverage pressure tactics to trick Attack.Phishing users into taking action that will put their organizations at risk . Of the more than 537,000 phishing threats Attack.Phishing GreatHorn detected in its research , 91 percent ( 490,557 ) contained characteristics of display name spoofs . Display name spoofs impersonate Attack.Phishing a person familiar to a business user in order to fool Attack.Phishing the recipient into thinking that the message came from Attack.Phishing a trusted source . It ’ s an extremely effective tactic against a workforce deluged with incoming communications all day , every day . Direct spoofs were the second most popular attack type ( 8 percent ) , and domain lookalikes made up less than 1 percent of phishing attacks Attack.Phishing . “ Stopping spear phishing attacks Attack.Phishing isn ’ t as simple as pushing a button ; the sheer volume of these attacks , coupled with the size of the attacks surface and security resource constraints , makes it impossible to mitigate risk solely via human intervention , no matter how much you try to train your end users , ” said GreatHorn CEO Kevin O ’ Brien