Imagine this: one minute you’re checking your email, and the next, your browser is completely locked. If that wasn’t worrying enough, whenever you click your mouse, a warning sound plays and your current IP address is shown prominently on your screen. No, this isn’t a ransomware attack where you’re locked out of your files by hackers. Instead, it’s a new scareware attack currently making the rounds online where scammers try to trick you into picking up your phone and calling them.
As reported by Cybernews, 2.8 million people have been targeted by this attack since the beginning of this year. Dubbed CypherLoc by security researchers at Barracuda, it uses a combination of phishing, malicious code and social engineering to get potential victims on the phone. From there, the scammers on the other end can get all sorts of personal and financial information out of them or even launch follow-up attacks.
