Facebook Messenger scams more than 10 million people

New York-based AI and network security firm PIXM released a report this week with a serious complaint: Millions of Facebook users He was scammed a few months ago by a single phishing scam, Who stole the account credentials of the criminals.

According to the company that specializes in preventing phishing violations, nearly 2.8 million people Fallen in the coup of 2021, and at least 8.5 million this year. According to the researchers, The campaign is still active It is associated with a single beneficiary residing in a city in Colombia. The hacker even responded to questions asked by the PIXM team.

Fake Facebook login page. (Source: PIXM/Disclosure.)source: PIXM

How does data theft scam on Messenger work?

Gate phishing campaign On Messenger is Fake Facebook login page Which opens and is very similar to the official interface of the social network. When the victim enters their ID and password, and clicks “Login”, this data is sent directly to the hacker’s server.

At this point, an automated mechanism is triggered, which not only logs into this account, but also sends a malicious link to all the user’s friends via Messenger. That is, when some of those friends also click on the link, they are also taken to the fake login page, where their friends also receive the link, and ciranda expands exponentially.

When PIXM researchers contacted the element claiming a phishing campaign, he said he earns $150 per thousand visits to the US ad exit page. This means that after deceiving users – As well as Facebook security checks – This scammer could have gotten 59 million US dollars (304 million Brazilian Real) so far.