Norton Labs found several types of scams exploiting the
Ukraine conflict, and here is what Kiwi consumers should
keep an eye out for.
1. Donation and
Charity Scams
When disaster strikes — whether
hurricane, fire, or war — people want to donate money to
help others experiencing times of hardship. But scammers
leverage generosity to trick people into giving money
tofake
charitiesand organisations. Norton Labs found several
donations scams attempting to capitalise on the recent
events in Ukraine.
Scammers jump at the chance to
register domains related to the current crisis. We saw a
dramatic increase in domains registered with a Ukrainian
fundraising-related theme within the first few days of the
conflict. New domains registered incorporated the keywords
“donate,” “Crypto,” and charitable keywords in conjunctions
with the word “Ukraine.” You can see below that the amount
of domains registered peaked March 1, when we saw more than
750 new domains registered with these related
keywords.
chart shows the quantity of newly registered domains
containing Ukraine* donate* that could be used for
scams.
Scammers also diversify their
strategies to lure victims and the currency they accept.
Cyber criminals will use the name and likeness of brands,
media outlets, public figures, and more to try to build
credibility. They will also try to make it easier to take
your money, by accepting various types of currency. Most
recently we spotted fake charity pages accepting Bitcoin,
Ethereum, Tether, and Dogecoin, among more traditional
currency.
are several variations of Ukraine-crisis themed phishing and
crypto charity
scams.
Advice:Use
caution before donating money to any
website.It is smart to make sure that
you are donating to a trusted organisation through a trusted
channel, and not a random website you found via an email,
social media, or a text message.
2.
Romance Scams
Romance
scamsinvolve someone being tricked into believing
they are in a relationship with someone they met online, but
that person is a scammer with the intention of building
trust with the victim to gain access to money. The NZ
Police’s Financial Intelligence Unit estimates Kiwis
lose tens of millions of dollars a year from romance
scams.
Romance scammers look for intriguing
backstories, including current events, to build credible
backstories, and we found the scammers aren’t staying away
from the Ukraine crisis. As part of our ongoing research
intoromance
scams, we stumbled on “Barry,” who was exploiting
the situation in Ukraine to try and woo “Ann,” a persona
Norton Labs researchers created to lure
scammers.
Check out this snippet of communication with
“Barry,” a romance scammer.
You’ll
see “Barry” mentioning that he would “check on the
base to know how many boys [had] been sent to Ukraine,”
and he said he needed to talk to the vice president for more
marines. This is a very unlikely story, given the current
political climate and his ambiguous title of marine officer
with direct communication to the vice president.
We
continued communication for a few hours, where the scammer
revealed a few more telltaleromance
scam signs. Examples included asking if Ann had a car or
a house, getting impatient with our breaks in communication,
wasting no time expressing infatuation with
Ann.
Advice:It is always a good
idea to be careful when meeting people online, especially if
they have a convenient story that makes it impossible to
meet in person. If they seem to fall in love quickly and
start to ask for financial help directly or to move money
for them, these are big red
flags.
3.Misinformation,
Disinformation, and Malinformation (MDM)
The
events in Ukraine havealso sparked social media campaigns
designed to inspire, deceive, and generally affect public
sentiment.
While many social media companies have been
taking steps to limit misinformation on their platforms, the
volume and diversity of Ukraine-related posts challenges
these systems. Here are a few examples our researchers found
of Ukraine-related MDM:
A recentvideowas
captioned to suggest Russian military jets flying in
formation over Kiev in 2022. The footage was recorded in
2020 and shows the jets flying over Russia.
Thistweetincludes
a video claiming to show the Ghost of Kyiv, a potentially
mythic Ukrainian pilot rumored to have shot down five
Russian jets. The video has since beendebunkedinmultiplenews
outlets.
Posted originally onTikTok
in 2021, this video was reposted and described as
showing a Ukrainian woman giving instructions on driving
captured Russian heavy vehicles. As with other examples,
these claims were quickly evaluated and found to befalsebymultiplefact-checkers.
Adeepfake
videoposted to YouTube and Facebook appeared to show
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky surrendering to
Russian forces and instructing Ukrainian soldiers to lay
down their arms and surrender. The use of a deepfake video
presented a new front in cyberwarfare, which Ukraine appears
to haveprepared
for.
Advice:
Resist the temptation to impulsively agree with what you
read, hear, and see on social media, even it supports your
point of view. Becarefulwho
you trust, and what you decide to propagate on social media.
Make sure that images and videos come from reputable sources
that perform fact-checking and have people on the ground to
validate information. Also consider how the tools of social
media fact checking can bemimicked
to trick peopleinto believing MDM content has been
independently fact-checked. Finally, rely on tools designed
toidentifyMDM,
especially deepfakes, and assist withmedia
literacy.
While thesituation
in Ukraineis evolving, so are the
cyberthreats facing consumers. Continue to stay alert for
attempts to exploit the conflict and be skeptical of news
you receive on social
media.
© Scoop Media
