Scammers publish ads for online hacking services on Ivy league websites
The malicious PDF uploaded on state and edu websites contains links to hacker services
Scammers have recently placed a range of misleading advertisements on the official websites of several US state, county, and local governments, a federal agency, and numerous educational institutions, offering hacking services.
The PDF files containing the deceptive advertisements were uploaded onto the official .gov websites of various entities, including the state governments of California, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Washington, and Wyoming. Additionally, the affected websites belonged to St. Louis County in Minnesota, Franklin County in Ohio, Sussex County in Delaware, the town of Johns Creek in Georgia, and the federal Administration for Community Living.
Additionally, scammers targeted multiple university websites, including UC Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, UC San Diego, University of Virginia, UC San Francisco and many others, by uploading similar hacker ads.
In addition to government and educational websites, other entities that fell victim to this scam include Spain’s Red Cross, Rockwell Collins (a defense contractor and aerospace manufacturer), which is a subsidiary of Raytheon, and an Ireland-based tourism company.
The PDFs contain links to various websites, with some promoting services that purportedly offer hacking into Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat accounts.
