Hackers Abuse Google Forms to Bypass Anti-spam Filters

Cybersecurity researchers at Talos have discovered that spammers are taking advantage of Google Forms quizzes to disseminate various types of online scams to unsuspecting victims.

Since Google’s servers are where the emails are coming from, it could be simpler for them to get past anti-spam filters and reach the recipient’s mailbox.

The spammers create new quiz forms and then abuse the “Release Scores” in the form to deliver their spam to the victim.

For instance, When constructing a new form in Google Forms, a creator has the option to “Make this a quiz.” The quiz’s decision to distribute grades “Later, after manual review” requires that email addresses be included.

The setting, choosing “responder input” allows the spammer to fill in the victim’s email.

You may add any text or URL to the message that is sent as part of the email, and Google will deliver it using the Google account that produced the quiz’s “From:” address, reads the report.

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The email messages created using this method have a high probability of reaching the victim’s inbox since they are generated from Google’s servers. 

The spam also affected the cryptocurrency by using Google Forms; a recent example is given below:

When the user clicks the ‘view’ button, it redirects to the fake website of spammers and wants to fill in the user email ID.

Accordingly, it redirects to the external link of a fake website for the DNS query. Upon accessing dudicyqehama[.]top, the user is presented with a sophisticated fraudulent website claiming to have over 1.3 Bitcoin in their account due to “automatic cloud Bitcoin mining,” with an estimated value of over $46,000. 

By clicking ‘continue’, it defaults to the sign-in pages, username and password are prefilled into the form.

When the victim attempts to claim their Bitcoin from the main site, they are redirected to what looks like a live chat with an agent named “Sophia.”

Want to fill out the form to transfer the money by filling in the bank details? The victim is instructed that to claim almost $48,000, the victim must pay an “exchange fee” of 0.25%, or $64.

To exchange, they want to fill out the last form by entering their name, email, and phone number. The spammer sends the BTC QR code to scam the victim.

Fortunately, none of them are not attacked in this scam.

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