Application security, Threat Management, Malware, Phishing

Plot twist: Phony Netflix membership emails turn out to be phishing scam

An email phishing campaign targeting Netflix users was recently found tricking victims into giving away their credit card and personal information after asking them to update their membership details.

According to a Monday blog post by FireEye, customers who clicked on the link inside the emails were directed to a log-in page that convincingly impersonated the popular streaming media service's website. The malicious web page – hosted on a legitimate, yet compromised web server – would first ask users to sign in with their credentials. Once that step was complete, it would direct victims to additional webpages requesting further details such as names, birth dates, billing addresses, Social Security numbers and payment card information.

FireEye reported that the phishing websites were no longer active by the time its article was posted.

To avoid detection, the campaign employed AES encryption to encode and obfuscate content presented on the client's side. “By obfuscating the webpage, attackers try to deceive text-based classifiers and prevent them from inspecting webpage content,” the blog post explains. Also, the phishing pages were not displayed to users located at IPs belonging to certain companies like Google or PhishTank.

Bradley Barth

As director of community content at CyberRisk Alliance, Bradley Barth develops content for SC Media online conferences and events, as well as video/multimedia projects. For nearly six years, he wrote and reported for SC Media as deputy editor and, before that, senior reporter. He was previously a program executive with the tech-focused PR firm Voxus. Past journalistic experience includes stints as business editor at Executive Technology, a staff writer at New York Sportscene and a freelance journalist covering travel and entertainment. In his spare time, Bradley also writes screenplays.

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