The expert spoke about fraudulent schemes on behalf of the dean's office and the rector's office

Fraudsters have come up with a new scheme to deceive students on behalf of the dean's office, the rector's office or archival services. A student or graduate is offered to take a test or confirm an account on "Public Services" in order to continue their studies or confirm their qualifications. This scheme uses several previously used legends and tactics, Sergey Golovanov, chief expert at Kaspersky Lab, told Izvestia on May 30.

For example, during the pandemic, attackers created fake pages with payments to various categories of citizens. The victim was persuaded to enter his details and transfer a small amount, ostensibly for registration, in order to receive further payment from the state.

"In recent schemes, the attackers persuaded the victims, under various pretexts, to name the codes from the SMS, for example, to set a date for changing meters or to make the keys to the intercom. The choice of students as targets is also not new, in recent years, attackers have often used in their legends a subject with letters allegedly from the dean's office so that the victim would click on links or download a malicious application," he said.

In such cases, the attackers rely on the victim's inattention. Moreover, in order to mislead people and lull their vigilance, scammers seek to start communication with those who are not related to finances.

"It is better to put down the phone and call back to the official number of the organization to clarify whether payments are actually due. It is also important not to give anyone one-time codes from messages. As preventive measures, it is worth installing security solutions that will warn of a potentially fraudulent call, prevent you from clicking on a phishing link and block the installation of malware," concluded Golovanov.

Student odes: fraudsters began calling Russians on behalf of universities

The attackers offer to confirm the right to a scholarship through Gosuslugi, take a test for graduates and confirm their qualifications.

Earlier, on May 15, it was reported that 97% of Russians surveyed had experienced cyberbullying over the past year. This is stated in the results of a study by the SberMarketing agency and the digital risk management company BI.ZONE. At the same time, the most common type of fraud is telephone fraud: four out of five Russians (79%) have received such calls over the past 12 months.