Phishers Are Moving In On LinkedIn

Cyber criminals are using LinkedIn to find a way into your files and if you received a link to LinkedIn.com via email, SMS/text or instant message, check before you click on it.  

The emails contain the LinkedIn logo and brand colours, as well as using other well-known organisation names, like American Express, to make the attacks appear more convincing. 

Phishing emails which appear to use the LinkedIn brand image have increased by 232% since 1 February, 2022, research by security software firm Egress has revealed. The attackers use display name spoofing and stylised HTML templates to socially engineer victims into clicking on phishing links and then entering their credentials into fraudulent websites.  

Cyber criminals are always changing their tactics in order to achieve their goals and now spammers, and phishers are taking advantage of a marketing feature on the business networking site which lets them create a LinkedIn.com link that bounces your browser to other websites, such as phishing pages that mimic top online brands. 

At issue is a “redirect” feature available to businesses that chose to market through LinkedIn.com. The LinkedIn redirect links allow customers to track the performance of ad campaigns, while promoting off-site resources. 
There is  little to stop criminals from leveraging newly registered or hacked LinkedIn business accounts to create their own ad campaigns using fake links, sometimes known as 'Slinks', 

Malicious or phishing emails that leverage LinkedIn’s Slinks are unlikely to be blocked by anti-spam or anti-malware filters, because LinkedIn is widely considered a trusted domain, and the redirect obscures the link’s ultimate destination. In a statement Linkedin said it has “industry standard technologies in place for URL sharing and chained redirects that help us identify and prevent the spread of malware, phishing and spam.” LinkedIn also said it uses 3rd party services, such as Google Safe Browsing, Spamhaus, Microsoft and others, to identify known-bad URLs.

If in any doubt, check out Urlscan.io, a free service that provides detailed reports on any scanned URLs and also offers a historical look at suspicious links submitted by other users. 

Linkedin’s parent company, Microsoft, is thought to be  one of the exploited used for phishing. Indeed, Check Point Software Tecnologies has found that as much as 45 percent of all brand phishing attempts globally target Microsoft. Check Point said LinkedIn was the sixth most phished brand last year.

The best advice to dodge phishing scams is to avoid clicking on links that arrive in emails, text messages and other mediums that you have not asked for.  

Often phishing scams invoke a time sensitive element that warns of dire consequences should you fail to respond or act quickly. Consequently, it’s important to have confirmation via another communication channel when receiving weird messages on LinkedIn.

CheckPoint:     Brian Krebs:       Techradar:    ITPro:   ZDNet:     Egress: 

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