There is no need to panic or be in anyway concerned for your personal safety about the latest batch of “phishing” emails that are going out with “death threats” or extortion regarding your “alleged” online activity around pornography sites etc.

A simple Google search using the following term “I Was Paid To Kill You scam” gave me 43 million results, all of the first 100 or so pages reporting this mail as a scam. A further search, narrowing the results down to only South Africa and only from last week, resulted in a little over 100 000 results, all of which were reporting as a hoax.

A similar scam first surfaced in the USA in 2006. An email from a would-be assassin was sent to a number of users from a Russian e-mail address. The “assassin” apparently appointed by a close acquaintance of his target, offers the victim the opportunity to buy him or herself a new lease on life by paying between $50,000 and $150,000.

If you receive mail like this, you should never panic. If you look at the extortion mail there are clues that reveal that the mail is a hoax:

1. The subject line: “I Was Paid To Kill You”, “YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF”, “YOUR PRIVACY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED”
   These are designed to cause anxiety, stress and panic.
2. Time limits: “You have 48 Hours to pay…”
   How can the scammer know that you have received the mail and when you have read the mail and keep track of time to see if “48-hours” has passed?
3. Engagement: “Contact me back via e-mail…”
   Never make contact with the scammers. This immediately alerts them that a “real person” read their mail and they will be able to concentrate their nefarious efforts on you.

If you ever receive emails like these, please report is to the Information Technology Cybersecurity Team using the following method:

Send the spam/phishing mail to help@sun.ac.za and sysadm@sun.ac.za.

Attach the phishing or suspicious mail on to the message if possible.
1. Start up a new mail addressed to sysadm@sun.ac.za (CC: help@sun.ac.za)
2. Use the Title “SPAM” (without quotes) in the Subject.
3. With this New Mail window open, drag the suspicious spam/phishing mail from your Inbox into the New Mail Window. It will attach the mail as an enclosure and a small icon with a light yellow envelope will appear in the attachments section of the New Mail.
4. Send the mail.

[Article by David Wiles]

Due to the vigilance of an observant personnel member from the US Business School, we have encountered a dangerous phishing scam being sent from a compromised UNISA account.

The Subject is “Dear SUN E-mail User © Copyright 2018 Stellenbosch University” which should immediately raise eyebrows. The phishing email “warns” you about the pending expiration of your e-mail account and prompts you to click on a link to reactivate it.

See below what the mail looks like:

The danger is that the phishing scammers have perfectly forged the university’s SINGLE SIGN-ON page, that is used by students an personnel to access the portal pages, the my.sun.ac.za page, SUNLearn etc., as you can see below. Not many people will notice that the address is not a university address, neither is it secure.

It is imperative that you do not click on the link in the mail, and do not provide the scammers with your username and password as they might be able to access the university’s systems that are accessible through the Single Sign-On page.

Last year scammers were able to forge the e-HR login page through a phishing scam and several staff members had their bank accounts details and other personal details exposed to the scammers.  In the light of the issues that Tygerberg staff have been having with general network access earlier this month, and this week’s issue with e-mail, the arrival of this sort of mail at this time can fool some people into thinking that it is legitimate and lead to compromised network and e-mail accounts.

Here’s how to report any phishing or spam mail:

Send the spam/phishing mail to help@sun.ac.za and sysadm@sun.ac.za.

Attach the phishing or suspicious mail on to the message if possible.
1. Start up a new mail addressed to sysadm@sun.ac.za (CC: help@sun.ac.za)
2. Use the Title “SPAM” (without quotes) in the Subject.
3. With this New Mail window open, drag the suspicious spam/phishing mail from your Inbox into the New Mail Window. It will attach the mail as an enclosure and a small icon with a light yellow envelope will appear in the attachments section of the New Mail.
4. Send the mail.

[Information supplied by David Wiles]

Monday started with a phishing scam threatening to close your mailbox, and Monday is ending with another attack, using a similar intimidation tactic about your mailbox size.

The grammar and spelling is very poor on this one so it should be rather easy to spot. However the use of University branding and “STELLENBOSCH HELP DESK” might fool some people.

The Subject will be “We apologies” (sic)

Dear User,

You have reached the storage limit for your mailbox. Please visit the following link to complete your e-mail access restore.

Follow this link to complete the process: Click Restore

STELLENBOSCH HELP DESK

If you do click on the link (which does not go to a university website) …this webpage will appear. 

Many thanks to all of you who reported this.

Remember these 5 guidelines:

1. Information Technology will never request sensitive information such as passwords.
2. Phishing e-mails often appear as an important notice or urgent matter such as threats that your mailbox is over quota.
3. Use of aggressive or intimidating language such as ‘immediately’ and threats of consequences of not verifying your account.
4. Misspelled words and poor grammar that take away from the professional context of the e-mail. (this one is quite obvious)
5. Use of an impersonal greeting. (Dear User)

If you have received mail that looks like this please immediately report it to the Information Technology Security Team using the following method:

Send the spam/phishing mail to help@sun.ac.za  and sysadm@sun.ac.za

 Attach the phishing or suspicious mail on to the message if possible. There is a good tutorial on how to do this at the following link (Which is safe) : http://stbsp01.stb.sun.ac.za/innov/it/it-help/Wiki%20Pages/Spam%20sysadmin%20Eng.aspx

1. Start up a new mail addressed to sysadm@sun.ac.za (CC: help@sun.ac.za)
2. Use the Title “SPAM” (without quotes) in the Subject.
3. With this New Mail window open, drag the suspicious spam/phishing mail from your Inbox into the New Mail Window. It will attach the mail as an enclosure and a small icon with a light yellow envelope will appear in the attachments section of the New Mail.
4. Send the mail.

IF YOU HAVE FALLEN FOR THE SCAM:

If you did click on the link of this phishing spam and unwittingly give the scammers your username, e-mail address and password you should immediately go to http://www.sun.ac.za/useradm and change the passwords on ALL your university accounts (making sure the new password is completely different, and is a strong password that will not be easily guessed.) as well as changing the passwords on your social media and private e-mail accounts (especially if you use the same passwords on these accounts.)

IT have set up a website page with useful information on how to report and combat phishing and spam. The address is:https://blogs.sun.ac.za/it/en/2017/11/reporting-spam-malware-and-phishing/

[Article by David Wiles]