Job recruitment scams occur when threat actors reach out to victims through different online messaging platforms from reputable organizations offering victims a well-paid job opportunity with minimal work. However, these job offers do not lead victims to prosperity and job satisfaction. Instead, victims are exploited and left behind with a nonexistent job, identity theft, and sometimes monetary loss. Additionally, the company that is impersonated in these attacks faces reputational consequences, ultimately putting its brand image at risk.

These scams became more popular with the Covid-19 pandemic when business communications started taking place online, leading to an increase in remote positions and employees becoming dependent on online methods of communication. With individuals seeking more remote working opportunities, threat actors found an opening to meet this demand by targeting job seekers with appealing remote jobs. As reported by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, while the number of job recruitment-related scams averaged 25 thousand per quarter before the pandemic, today that number has quadrupled, totaling over 97 thousand in Q3 of 2022.

As January and February are peak months for job searchers, threat actors are expected to increase their efforts in scamming people into ‘signing on’ with fake and brand-impersonated job offers.

How do these brand impersonation scams work?

Threat actors use text messages, emails, social media, fake job ads, and fake LinkedIn profiles to spread phony job offers, often employing multiple avenues of communication to gain a broad reach and a higher likelihood of success. Threat actors employ brand impersonation tactics to inspire trust in the messages they send and post online. This occurs when a threat actor uses a brand’s logo, colors, font, and so on to ensure recognition and inspire trust with victims.

As brands today all have some form of online presence (websites, mobile applications, social media accounts), replicating and impersonating a brand is a relatively simple task for threat actors. In these job offers, threat actors often include a valid-looking link to a fake website that, through brand impersonation, looks genuine and similar to the legitimate site. This helps inspire even more trust in the victim, leading them to believe that the job offer is the product of an honest company.

To do this, threat actors first register a domain similar to the target company before adding the link in an email, as illustrated in the images below.

  

         Source

The website victims visit will be a clone or close copy of the content from the legitimate target website, which the threat actors will have altered to fit their ‘story.’ The images below represent an example of this. In this instance, threat actors have taken the legitimate hiring page from Spirit Airlines (on the left) and created a brand-impersonated hiring website (on the right) that is very similar but with noticeable differences. The most exciting factor is that the brand’s imitated site asks victims to upload “… driver’s license both front and back page “, which is not mentioned anywhere on the legitimate website and shows an apparent attempt to steal the victim’s personal information.

.                                  Legitimate job site                                              Brand Impersonated Job Site

When victims respond to these scams, they often move forward quickly with a short interview process involving little interaction between the threat actor and the victim. In some instances, victims have merely been asked to answer a short online brand-impersonated questionnaire or send a one-way recording of themselves to answer questions regarding their skills and experience before being asked to sign a contract. While this may sound ludicrous, some companies have a fast hiring process, making this method not highly illogical. Companies generally employ a more relaxed and less formal approach to job seekers today, allowing wide-ranging interaction methods. Threat actors exploit this by issuing scams that follow the same techniques, leaving victims less likely to contradict and question the application process due to the new and faster communication norm.

Prevent the next Cyber Threat

Bfore.AI patented AI technology combined with hyperscale observation infrastructure and modern APIs augment our customers security postures with Predictions.

Discover Predictive Cyber-Security

Book a live demo with our specialist to discover how Bfore.AI helps organization fight cyber threats with their patented technology.