Kropyvnytsky's "Hrechka" reports a phishing attack

The Kropyvnytsky media outlet "Hrechka" reports a phishing attack: unknown persons sent several phishing emails to the editorial office's corporate inbox.

The editor, Anastasia Dzyubak, informed the IMI representative in the Kirovohrad oblast about this.

"Of course, we have already encountered phishing attempts. The last time they actively tried to phish us was in July 2022. Later, we started receiving similar messages on Hrechka's Facebook page, allegedly from the Facebook support service, but we kept calm and ignored those regular messages," the editor said.

According to Anastasia Dzyubak, this time the emails were extremely similar to official messages from Facebook moderators. The journalists were asked to verify their Facebook page within 24 hours by following an active link attached. The need for this supposedly arose due to complaints about "Hrechka's" failure to comply with the social network's internal policies.

The journalists were alarmed by the sender address: [email protected].

The phishing email received by Kropyvnytsky's "Hrechka". Photo by "Hrechka"

"I give my colleagues the same advice I have to my team: think three times before clicking on suspicious links, and always pay attention to the sender's email address," the editor summarized.

"Hrechka" journalists have already encountered suspicious activity targeting their work this year. In early January, the editors received an email from an unknown address with an offer to buy their outlet. Many Ukrainian media outlets received similar letters last December.

In January, scammers sent Facebook page administrators phishing messages with an offer to follow a link to "verify their account". Their true goal is to take over the page data.

In the same month, unknown persons tried to access to the editorial email inbox of Kherson's MOST. The journalists received a letter supposedly from the Ukrainian State Tax Service, but there were all the hallmarks that the letter was Google translated from Russian into Ukrainian.