New hit of WhatsApp clone Discovered by researchers in Kaspersky This Thursday (13). According to the cybersecurity company, fraudsters use it Social engineering To deceive the victims and circumvent Double authentication Act The WhatsApp. The system consists of two steps, and in the second, criminals use the support of the special messenger to give more credibility to the fraud. Next, see more details and how to protect yourself from this new fraud.
New cloned WhatsApp scam stolen account and disable two-factor authentication; Understanding – Photo: Anna Kylin Ball / TechTudo
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Criminals have been practicing the cloned WhatsApp scam for just over two years. Communication simulation From stores or Advertising sites, Fraudsters try to steal the Messenger account by requesting a WhatsApp “verification code”, which is sent via SMS to the user. With these numbers in hand, criminals activate the account on another phone and send messages to the victim’s family and friends, asking for money or ransom for stolen WhatsApp. To protect the messaging program, the main solution is to enable two-factor authentication in the app.
However, this scam has evolved and criminals can now circumvent Messenger Double Authentication. As identified by Kaspersky, the first step in this trick remains very similar: the criminals call the victim claiming to be from the Health Ministry and ask if they can run a Covid-19 survey. Then they ask the victim to enter the verification code sent to the cell phone, saying the step will be necessary to complete the fake search.
The “novelty” scam comes in the second part, which attacks authentication in two factors. After obtaining the verification code, the criminals finish the alleged search and contact the victim again, pretending to be in support of WhatsApp. They say they identified suspicious activity on the account and sent an email to the user to record another password for verification again.
However, by clicking on the link, the victim disables the protection to create a new password, and this is where the fraudster gets to cheat the system and steal WhatsApp. According to Kaspersky, what surprised the company’s researchers was the fact that the email the criminals used was actually real – that is, it was sent by the messenger support itself.
Criminals request 2-step WhatsApp code retrieval to steal victims’ account – Image: Run / Kaspersky
Kaspersky’s chief analyst, Fábio Assolini, explains that this is because WhatsApp allows password re-registration – as it happens when we lose an email password, for example. According to Assolini, “In the same way that we can request password recovery in an online store, we can request to restore the messaging app’s double authentication, in case we forget it.”
In this sense, the WhatsApp clone scam has evolved. Now, with these new tricks, criminals have used more convincing techniques of social engineering, which Fábio Assolini classifies as “a new level.”
According to Kaspersky researchers, the most effective way to protect yourself is to suspect the fraud and know in advance that it exists. The company recommends that messaging app users continue to use double authentication to protect their accounts, without disabling the protection at all.
Additionally, the cybersecurity company also recommends that users request that their numbers be deleted from lists of app IDs capable of identifying calls. This is because this may be one of the methods criminals use to obtain victims’ phone numbers using their name.
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