Kogan gift card scam surfaces

Kogan gift card scam surfaces

There is another gift card scam currently circulating. This one offers a Kogan gift card to the value of $50, if the recipient completes a survey. It is a scam, and sits alongside various other scams promising gift cards from Amazon, Coles and Woolworths.

This particular email campaign involving gift cards started up early this morning. A typical example of the email is shown in Figure A. The subject line is “Do you qualify for a $50 Kogan Gift Card”. The sender is “Survey rewards now”. There are six links in the email. We have circled each of the links. They lead back to the same website. There are instructions given at the top of the email that will allow these types of email into your Inbox. An opt-out link is at the foot of the email.

MailShark Kogan gift card scam surfaces
Figure A – Click to Enlarge

The body of the email tells the recipient they can receive a gift card by completing a survey. These types of emails are copying tactics used by marketing companies. Marketing companies often dangle the prize of a gift card as an enticement to fill out surveys.

As ever there are signs that this email is a fraud. None of the links led back to the genuine Kogan site. They link to a malicious site. When the user visits the site, a remote access tool is installed on the victim’s PC. The remote access tool communicates with a command and control server and adds the PC to the botnet. Botnets are used for distributed denial of services attacks. They are also used to generate more spam.

These types of emails are a variation on the phishing emails we typically see, but they are no less dangerous. Indeed, these types of emails exacerbate the problem by generating more spam. Delete this email if you receive it.

Scott Reeves
MailShark
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