Several universities report that employees are receiving phishing scams that claim to have a link to news about a student death. We have not seen this particular phish at the University of Delaware. Yet.

A sample of this scam is shown below:


Von: Roerup Jana (Student Eco15) [Jana.Roerup@economics.unibz.it]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 4. November 2015 22:13
An: Roerup Jana (Student Eco15)
Betreff: SAD NEWS.

TO ALL FACULTY\STAFF,

We regret to announce the death of one of our student with great
future. please click on the sign-in to get full
informations about this student sent to your inbox and also get the tribute page to
send your condolence to the family of the student.

university admin.


The sender of this scam hopes that you’ll be so shocked by the content–alleging to be about the death of one of our students–that you won’t notice where the message came from or where the sign-in link really goes. In this case, the link goes to a fake Outlook Web Access (OWA) login screen.

In the version shown above, sent from an account using German language, the English grammar mistakes make it an easy phish to spot. If this scam successfully hooks enough victims, similar attempts to startle you with “SAD NEWS” will probably have the grammar errors cleaned up. So be alert.

At the University of Delaware, you do not need to log in to read a news story. Important news is either communicated directly in email from a University official or posted to UDaily.

If you receive a message like this one asking you to log in to receive sad or shocking news about an event on campus, do not click the link. Delete the message, then go to UDaily, the University’s news feed, to read campus news.

As always, Think B4 U Click!