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Phishing Campaigns Leverage SVB Collapse in New Schemes
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank became a prime target for threat actors to build phishing campaigns in days following.
Capitalizing on human emotion and fear, as many phishing campaigns do, threat actors (TAs) developed a number of methods to prey on affected companies – chiefly by making up a buyback program for a US stable coin (USDC) which was affected by the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
After Circle – the manager and issuer of USDC – announced it had cash reserves in SVB, many holders of the coin scrambled to cash out on their coin.
“Threat actors prey on human emotion and fear, and likely consider the SVB collapse a prime theme to exploit,” said proofpoint in a tweet, warning those handling financial info to exercise additional caution and diligence.
The phishing campaigns sent messages impersonating cryptocurrency brands with malicious links telling them they could redeem their USDC to USD at a 1:1 rate. The link would then be lured to install a smart contract that would transfer the content of the victims DeFi wallet to the attacker.
Other phishing campaigns set up websites offering the 1:1 buyback program or a rewards program. Cyble, a cyber research and intelligence lab identified a few suspicious domains:
- svbcollapse[.]com
- svbclaim[.]com
- svbdebt[.]com
- svbclaims[.]net
- login-svb[.]com
- svbbailout[.]com
- svb-usdc[.]com
- svb-usdc[.]net
- svbi[.]io
- banksvb[.]com
- svbank[.]com
- svblogin[.]com
- redeemed-circle[.]com
- circle-reserves[.]com
- circleusdcoin[.]com
- circle-mintusdc[.]com
- svb-circle[.]com
- circle.web3claimer[.]net
- usd-circle[.]com
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In light of the phishing campaigns, Cyble recommends refreshing yourself with cybersecurity best practices.
Avoid downloading files from websites you do not know, as well as opening links without verifying their authenticity and use anti-virus software on your devices.
As an employer, it is important to educate employees on ways to protect themselves and the company against phishing scams. Employers should also enable data loss prevention solutions on their employees systems, and monitor the beacon on the network level to block data exfiltration by malware.
