A Russian national has been indicted in the United States over an alleged malware operation that targeted roughly 80,000 freelance workers worldwide. Prosecutors say the campaign used fake accounts and booby-trapped Excel documents to turn ordinary work messages into a route for stealing data and taking control of computers.
The case highlights how familiar office files can still be used to reach large groups of independent workers, who often receive project files from people they do not know. Between June 2016 and November 2017, the alleged operation sent messages from about 255 fraudulent accounts on an online freelance employment platform. Analysts at the U.
S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of California, noted that each malicious Excel attachment asked the recipient to enable a macro. That action allegedly downloaded malware from the internet, showing how a simple prompt could bridge the gap between a convincing message and a serious computer compromise.
The…
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