2023-05-22 17:58:13
This is the home stretch for income tax declarations and the hackers would also like to take some figures from you. After the Crit’Air vignette or the false delivery of parcels, a tax data scam campaign has been gaining momentum for a week as the campaign to send declarations in paper format ends on Monday.
Sent from a number in 06, the text message attempts to impersonate the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP) and includes a link to a malicious site, emphasizing the urgency: “DGFIP alert: For reasons of security, please confirm your mobile number before 27/05/23. Go directly to “Impots-2023”. com”.
This platform follows the contours of the official Impots.gouv.fr website and first requires you to enter your 13-digit tax number before requesting your password. After sucking up this tax data, the scammers get greedy and ask to enter the missing information: the phone number and more surprisingly, a two-digit area code. Once the “verification confirmed”, the page redirects to the real tax site where, ironically, a warning message against attempted fraudulent reimbursement scams, which have become a classic form of “phishing”, first by e-mail and more recently by SMS.
The best time
“The usual teaser messages for scams are often based on this false promise and circulate more at the end of the summer”, underlines Jean-Jacques Latour, expertise manager at cybermalveillance.gouv.fr. “They are currently acting in small successive bursts of SMS because it is the time of year in the midst of the declaration campaign when we exchange the most with the tax authorities” points out the expert. Its victim support platform has recorded an increase in the number of articles dedicated to tax-related phishing for the past few days. A good way to remove a first doubt by identifying the techniques of cyberdelinquents.
But the bandits have innovated on this wave and are not limited to collecting data. “This is the first time that we have seen a laconic message which aims rather to take control of the account for embezzlement”, notes Jean-Jacques Latour. With profitable scenarios in mind such as changing bank details, falsifying a declaration and obtaining tax credits in refunds or reselling their loot to other criminals with ever so rich imaginations. Long confined to e-mails, phishing has also mutated into “smishing”, text messages to lure the victim to a fraudulent site in order to extort him.
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