Forbes reports:
When you think of cybercriminal actors watching you, maybe phishing threats such as Hello Pervert, where the attacker claims to know where you live and has proof to back it up, spring to mind. Or how about the ransomware gang that has been found to install employee monitoring software to watch victims at work? Recent reports even suggested that a quarter of Americans think someone is spying on their smartphone usage. But I’m more concerned with the hackers who watch what you are searching for in order to launch targeted attacks. I wrote about one such attack campaign on March 16, where MassJacker threat actors used people searching for pirated software as a means to get them to download malware. The latest attacks, however, involve crypto hackers exploiting people looking for help with their wallets and striking while they are at their most vulnerable. Here’s what you need to know about the FreeDrain campaign that security experts have warned is operating at an industrial scale.
… The security researchers found that simple queries for help, such as asking how to get a specific crypto wallet balance, for example, produced multiple malicious links on major search sites, although not always on page one, but “often within the first few result pages.” By following those links that the investigators knew were not legitimate websites, they encountered live phishing pages immediately.
Read more at Forbes.