Fake and “fraudulent” offers – supposedly sent by companies like Amazon and Adidas – were being spread by scammers via WhatsApp in celebration of International Women’s Day. According to a report by the Cyber Peace Foundation and Autobot Infosec Private, the messages appeared to promote free gifts to celebrate the day. Specifically, the scam website stated the following:
"Women's Day Gift. More than 1000 chocolates, mobile phone equipment, as well as 500 cash prizes ranging from 50 to 5000 USD. All you have to do is open the right gift box. You have 3 attempts, good luck!"
The alleged gifts included shoes and smartphones from manufacturers such as Huawei.
Users were directed to strange sites, with domain that seemed unofficial, such as “.xyz” or “.buzz”, and were told that they had won a prize. Users were then invited to participate in a survey, answering questions such as: “Do you know Amazon?, [sic]” and “Which Amazon product [sic] would you like to buy as a gift for Women’s Day?”, after which users were given three options to receive their “prize”.
These malicious sites have many grammatical errors and encourage users to repeatedly go to different addresses, thus revealing their false origin. The site addresses include “oovip”, “phonesvip”, “v-app”, “adidastore” and “tatasamsung” . In addition, there is usually a social media comment section – which has also been spoofed – under the sites, where many fake users have commented on their alleged winnings.
As reported by the British newspaper “Independent”, many of these sites were created in February or March, which is another indication of their malicious and “fraudulent” nature, given that the legitimate sites of Amazon, Adidas and Samsung have been around for a long time.
In addition, the two organizations identified during the investigation the Chinese characters written in the source code, which were translated into English: “Answer the questions to receive gifts for Valentine’s Day. I participated in this questionnaire and won a mobile phone. My friend also won prizes.” This shows that the same scam has been used on many holidays and not just International Women’s Day.
As part of this malicious campaign, scammers collect browser and system data from devices, while also encouraging a user to "share the scam" with others.
