HSBC phishers disguise attacks as Wimbledon tickets prize

With summer rapidly approaching (we hope..) in the UK, many people’s thoughts are turning to strawberries, cream and action on the grass courts of SW19.

Yes, it’s almost time for the Wimbledon tennis tournament!

Here’s an email that we’ve seen spammed out to computer users, pretending to come from banking giant HSBC.

The messages have a subject line of “Claim your ticket at Wimbledon” and have a file attached called prize-form.html.

Opening the file to unclock your prize, however, is not such a good idea as it contains a form which asks for all sorts of personal information about your bank account – including your date of birth, memorable names, card security code and so forth.

The scam earns some extra credibility because HSBC is a genuine sponsor of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, and there was indeed a competition held by the bank to meet Tim Henman.

Winners, however, were notified on 10 May 2011 according to…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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