"National Commercial Bank Alert - Action Required" Phishing Emails

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Updated: Feb. 22, 2017 2017-02-22T14:48:03
Posted: Feb. 22, 2017 2017-02-22T14:45:37
Online Threat Alerts (OTA)

The email message below with the subject: "National Commercial Bank Alert - Action Required," which appears as if it was sent by the National Commercial Bank (NCB), is a fake. The fake message is a phishing scam that contains an attached form that request the recipients' NCB online account information. If recipients submit their account information on the fake form, it will be sent to the cybercriminals behind the phishing scam, who will use the same information to gain access to their accounts. Once the cybercriminals have gotten access to the accounts, they will steal money from them and use them fraudulently. Therefore, recipients of the same email message are asked to delete it and should not follow the instructions in it.

A Sample of the "National Commercial Bank Alert" Phishing Email

From: NCB Jamaica [mailto:no-reply@jncb.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 1:48 PM
Subject: National Commercial Bank Alert - Action Required
Attachment: InternetProfile.html

Changes to your rates

Dear Customer,

At NCB Jamaica, we regularly review our customer records to ensure we have the most recent and up to date information.

To complete the process, we just need to verify that this email address belongs to you.

· Please find the Attached HTML Document

and follow the easy instructions

Have a question?

No worries! Call one of our Customer Service Representatives on (868) 62-FIRST (623-4778) . We're here from 8am to 7pm Monday to Friday.

Thanks,
Marisa Grieco
Customer Operations Manager
NCB

NCB Jamaica and most other legitimate companies will never send email messages to their customers asking them to open a HTML document in order to verify their email addresses or update their records. Therefore, recipients of unexpected or suspicious email messages with attachment ending with ".html" or ".htm" are asked to contact the organizations the email messages appear to have been sent from, in order to verify their authenticity, before they attempt to open the attachment.

Remember, although the "From" address of an email message contains the email address of a legitimate organization; it doesn’t necessarily means it was sent by that organization. There is a technique called Email Spoofing, which allows the sender of an email message to change the "From" address of an email message, to make the same message appear as if it came from someone else.

For example:

I can send an email message to a friend and change the “From” email address of the same message to "president@whitehouse.gov." Once my friend receives the email message, he/she will think the email message came from the president of the United States, when it was actually sent by me. So, never rely on the “From” or sender’s email address to determine if an email message is legitimate or not.