During the Christmas holidays, the servers of the Special Olympics of New York were compromised by hackers and used to carry out a phishing campaign targeting the organization's past donors.
Special Olympics NY is a non-profit organization that helps athletes with intellectual disabilities. It provides athletic education and training services and organizes games and competitions for more than 67,000 children and adults with intellectual disabilities throughout New York City.
The nonprofit sent out a notice about the hacking incident to inform all users . It urged donors to ignore the latest message they received (supposedly from the organization). It also said that the hackers only managed to breach the “communications system” that stores some contact information. financial data Users’
“As you may have noticed, email server was compromised. We have fixed the problem and sincerely apologize,” Special Olympics NY wrote in an email to donors.
“The hack was on our communications system, which only includes information and not your financial information,” the alert said. “Please ensure that your contact information is protected and kept confidential.”
Phishing emails
The phishing emails sent by the hackers to victims supposedly included a notification about an upcoming donation. According to the email, $1,942.49 would be automatically deducted from the victim-donor's account within the next two hours
The hackers set this short time frame to scare victims into opening one of two embedded links, which supposedly led to a PDF file containing the donation statement.
“Please check and confirm that everything is correct, if you have any questions, find my number on the statement and call me,” the phishing emails said. “There is no mistake, I have double-checked everything. Thank you, have a great weekend.”.
Opening the links led the victim to a site controlled by the hackers (now defunct). It was likely used to steal credentials and credit card information.
The Special Olympics organization said donors can now donate safely as the issue has been resolved.
