The Information Security Group is alerting the Brown community to numerous inquiries regarding “second hand scams.” According to reports, the scammers are going after legitimate professors/email addresses (whether they are looking for a job or not), who are sent phony job offers supposedly from Brown University. The email may include an attachment that contains the offer and terms of the position, along with contact information.
While the attachments appear benign, providing the information requested in them would give scammers the information they’d need to begin a social engineering attack on the unsuspecting recipient.
If you receive an email from a recipient who is looking to verify the email (which is fortunately so poorly crafted that any discerning person would realize it is fake — example below), assure the individual that this did not come from Brown University. Let them know that since it did not originate at Brown, and anyone can masquerade as another when sending email, there is nothing that Brown can do to stop this. They should instead ignore the email.
———- SAMPLE EMAIL ———-
From: Brown University
Date: 2012/3/3
Subject: Attn: Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx
To: obozayev@gmail.com
Attn: Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx,
With the reference of your CV/Resume & application which was forwarded to our office through our Human Resources Team @ www.timesjobs.com, we have found much interest in your previous experience and qualifications, and also due to the short period we have in our summer period recruitment project, we have offered the below position to become part of Brown University;
Offered Designation: Russian Teacher
Job location: Providence, RI, USA
The offer and terms is attached to this message, and you are required to read carefully, sign and return back the acceptance copy to us through email while more more advise on how to join us here would be given to you, also you are free to comment on anything about the offer.
Once again, congratulation for becoming back of us.
If you need any additional information, do not hesitate to email me.
Regards,
Mr. Gregory Chapman
Manager – Human Resources
Brown University
Prospect Street, Providence,
Rhode Island 02912, USA
Tel: +1 (510) 996 9562
Fax: +1 (510) 996 9563
Email: careers@brownuni.com
Website: http://brownuni.com
