The Computer Incident Response Centre Luxembourg (CIRCL) has announced a warning that a wave of fake Microsoft support calls has been occurring the past days across Luxembourg; in the last weeks, a rising number of these scam calls were reported to the police.
What is happening?
The callers claim to be from Microsoft and that they have identified some issues with the users’ Microsoft Windows operating system. They propose help and while they are on it they make a contract in order to finalise the process. Then they ask for a credit card number in order to finalise the service offer. They also use remote access tools in order to access the users’ Microsoft Windows OS.
What can you do?
CIRCL has advised anyone receiving such calls to hang up and to not support this type of claim. However, if a person has followed the requests and find himself/herself trapped, CIRCL recommends them to block their credit card and directly contact the police. The computer should be re-installed and a backup should be restored, because it is not evident what kind of tools the criminals install during the time that they have access to it.
More information and support available
A MISP (Malware Information Sharing Platform) event has also been created.
CIRCL and the police are working together and are currently trying to disrupt the infrastructure of the attackers.
A similar wave of attacks occurred back in 2015; for further information see https://securitymadein.lu/microsoft-scam_en/
