Windows 10 scam promises free upgrade — avoid this now

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Windows 10 scam promises complimentary upgrade — avoid this now

(Image credit: Tom'southward Guide)

If yous're still running Windows vii, then y'all'd improve picket out for a phishing scam that offers to upgrade your reckoner to Windows 10.

Spotted by information-security firm Cofense, the scam begins with an email from "Genadiy" with the subject line "RE: Microsoft Windows Upgrade."

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"Your Part Windows computer is Outdated and an Upgrade is scheduled for replacement Today," the electronic mail message helpfully notes. "To Upgrade your Windows x, please open your browser to the Windows ten Upgrade Projection Site," followed past a link.

In the body of the e-mail is a table of laptops with serial numbers and locations, plus a list of the benefits you'd become from upgrading: "COVID-19 Employee Symptom Tracker," "Access your pay slips" and "Admission the new staff directory," among others.

"This lure needs improvement, simply information technology'south not completely atrocious," Cofense researcher Kaleb Kirk noted in a company blog post. "Nosotros give this threat actor two gilded stars for the table with made-up laptops, simulated serial numbers, building, etc."

All we demand is your password, please

Moving right along, the "upgrade" link takes you to a fake Microsoft Outlook login page, where the scamming actually begins. The idea is that you're supposed to utilise your email credentials to authorize this "organisation upgrade."

Don't do information technology! You'd really just be giving your username and countersign to the scammers so that they can use them to get into your email account. In the by few companies we've worked in, those credentials would also requite full access to the corporate network.

Cofense says that once yous input your credentials, the scam site bounces you to a real Microsoft page informing you that, yes indeed, "Support for Windows 7 has ended." (It concluded in January 2020.)

Like the scammers, Microsoft also promises to assist you lot upgrade to Windows ten. Unlike the scammers, it would adopt yous pay for the upgrade. (However, there are still legitimate means to upgrade to Windows 10 for free.)

This scam is clearly designed to target people using Windows seven on workplace computers, only information technology's vague enough and then that information technology might snare some home users, too. With millions of people working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the line betwixt work and habitation has gotten pretty blurred anyway.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has too been a dishwasher, fry melt, long-haul commuter, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting effectually in the information-security infinite for more than than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom'due south Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random Telly news spots and even moderated a panel give-and-take at the CEDIA home-technology briefing. Yous tin can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/windows-7-upgrade-scam

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