According to the cybersecurity firm, Group-IB, approximately 2,000 fake job advertisements attack Arabic speakers across the Middle East and Africa in 2022. Fraudsters desired to hack into people’s social media networks to access passwords to break into their bank accounts.
Scammers are targeting job seekers, to swipe their credentials and potentially cause them economic loss, Sharef Hlal, the head of the company’s digital risk protection analytics team for the region said in the report.
In Arabic writing, the job advertisements reached 40 of the ‘largest enterprises’ in the MEA region, but the statement did not name them.
One social media page had an ad impersonating a famous petroleum company in Algeria, falsely proposing monthly salaries of $4,800 for drivers and painters. Another spoofed a Saudi dairy company, while some of the pages falsely advertised jobs for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
By acquiring data from people’s social media accounts, such as passwords, offenders desired to use the data to access bank accounts and other financial assets to rob money.
Nearly half of the firms mocked by scammers for fake job advertisements were from Egypt and about a quarter were from Saudi Arabia.
A total of 64 percent of the fake advertisements came from fraudsters claiming to be firms in the logistics sector, almost 20 percent from the food sector, and 12 percent from the petroleum industry.
