Spear Phishing Attack (June 2014)

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Members of the ECE Department,

It has come to our attention that there has been a spear phishing attempt against ECE account holders. You may have received a message similar to the one quoted below, purportedly signed by Andre Ivanov. The message contains a link to a fake website that looks like the ECE Webmail login page, but is in fact nothing of the sort. (If you inspect the URL, you'll see that it is actually a fraudulent login page hosted on the webs.com free web hosting service.)

What to do

  1. Do not follow the link. Do not enter any information on the web page at that link.
  2. If you have accidentally entered your login credentials, please consider your account to be compromised. You must immediately change your password. (See https://help.ece.ubc.ca/How_To_Change_Your_Password for instructions.)
  3. If you have any questions about this incident, please do not hesitate to ask a member of the IT Staff (e-mail help@ece.ubc.ca or stop by MacLeod 105).


Reminder about our anti-phishing measures

  • We do not normally send out warnings for every phishing attempt. However, this attack was unusually well crafted, and merits special treatment.
  • To help you verify their authenticity, mass announcements such as this one will always be cross-posted to the ECE website. For example, this announcement also appears at https://help.ece.ubc.ca/Spear_Phishing_Attack_(June_2014) .

Derek Poon
UBC IT Services @ ECE

On Jun 12, 2014, at 12:02 , ECE Administration <helpdesk569@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Staff/Student

All latest information on seminars, UBC Research Day, assignments, examinations,
etc has been posted on the Electrical and Computer Engineering Info Center page
for everyone access. For more information and clarifications, Please log-on to the
Electrical and Computer Engineering Info Center using the link provided below
and a verification link will be sent to you Within 24hrs for all the information and
clarifications.

Click here [LINK] For more information and clarifications

This notice is from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Computing &
Information Technology.

Copyright © 2014 Electrical and Computer Engineering, 
All Rights Reserved.
             
                  Department Head ( Andre Ivanov )