An intelligent Phishing email work – Be aware!

A slightly different topic this time…

I am writing this post, half in appreciation of a brilliant work of phishing email from some one out there… and other half : to help some one who could fall victim to this malicious intent from that same person(s)!

I got a mail in my gmail account yesterday, asking to verify my gmail account:

Gmail account verification mail that I received

 

Note that the from email ID is a bit of a giveaway for careful eyes:

it says “gooqle” and is not from “google.com”.

But how many normal gmail users will be noticing those?

Cleverly disguised!

When I clicked on the link to sign-in for verification, I got the following screen (looks quite authentic isn’t it?):

The verification login screen

 

Hardly anything suspicious here…

But I happened to notice (lucky me!)  the full url here which was like:

 

Notice the url with IP address than a proper         domain! Again, very easy to miss…

 

 

At this stage, I was convinced this was a phishing attempt. But decided to play along. I have entered my google ID with a Wrong password. Obviously, the phishing system can’t recognize that… So it passed me to the next page:

    For an unsuspecting victim of this           phishing , this looks like another               authentic google page.

And see what they are asking –

Your phone number or recovery             email!

I decided to play along – just typed a random 10 digit number into the phone details and pressed continue:

It gave me this page, before transferring to the “actual” gmail login page:

Another brilliantly disguised page.

What it says in reality is:

“Your account is updated into our “hacked” accounts list” 🙂

This has to be one of the best crafted phishing attempt I have come across. A recipient of this email can very easily fall prey to this attempt – and I hope this post helps as a protection.

Please feel free to share with people known to you!

 

 

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