Fraud Alert: That WhatsApp message from your boss may be a red herring

Any email or message from your manager is meant to catch your immediate attention. You usually drop whatever you are doing and react immediately, even if it after work hours. But, next time, be extra wary. Depending on the content of the message, you may want to double-check that your boss is actually the one texting you.

Analysts at cybersecurity firm CloudSEK have found a spear phishing campaign targeting companies wherein a specific form of a message purportedly coming from superiors or CEOs may actually be a fraud. In these messages, the threat actor pretends to be the company’s CEO and sends a WhatsApp message to colleagues (mostly top-level executives) on their personal phone numbers.