As discovered by security researchers at Cisco Talos, scammers have now found a way to abuse Google Forms to conduct a new spam and phishing campaign. The cybercriminals sending these malicious messages to users’ emails are also using a fake AI chatbot with the aim of stealing cryptocurrencies from anyone who falls into the trap, likely also transacting through those payment methods.
As is often the case, this procedure is capable of deceiving many users. However, to put everyone’s mind at ease, at the moment this new scam method was brought to light, they hadn’t managed to steal any money from potential victims. Cisco Talos hasn’t hesitated to state that this new tactic pays “extraordinary attention to detail.” Clearly, all of this is conducted through Google Forms, at least it all begins with the mentioned service from Mountain View.
This is the new spam and phishing campaign by cyber scammers
It seems that the first thing scammers do is create a new file in Forms, choosing the option that allows converting that file into a questionnaire. After this, the attackers set up two very key aspects to carry out their attack: one is to publish the grades later, once the manual review is done (which allows the questionnaire to collect email addresses of potential victims) and the “responder’s entry” in responses, enabling attackers to complete the form using the potential victim’s email address.
With all this done, Google Forms can generate a link to the document that criminals can access to complete it. Then, they can click on “release scores,” triggering the service to send a notification to the victim’s email. What’s interesting is that this notification message can be fully customized before sending, showing an exaggerated attention to detail. Regardless of what the message says, this entire process ultimately aims to deceive someone into believing that, a year ago, apparently, they logged into a bitcoin cloud mining service and completely neglected it.
By instilling a bit of fear into potential victims, they manage to coax them into being “helped” by an obviously fake AI chatbot. This chatbot supposedly assists in converting the cryptocurrency in question into fiat currency so they can withdraw the remaining cash (as they claim to have taken a portion of the money deposited in that service). After this “assistance” from the chatbot, it requests a fee for the service, around 64 dollars, which must be paid in bitcoin to an address provided by the bot itself.
