An attack that stole user credentials of over 8000 Tumblr users has been detected and named as one of 'the largest and most successful phishing attacks of its kind to date'.
GFI Software threat researcher Christopher Boyd first noticed the attack on 23rd June when users of the content-sharing website were asked to take a test to become a member of the 'Tumblr IQ Society'.
He said that this morphed into a high-yield phishing campaign that has propagated across the Tumblr platform and managed to steal thousands of credentials.
The Tumblr IQ domain was registered on the 15th June and the adverts began on the 23rd promoting the 'Tumblr IQ Society'.
Shortly after, additional domains started to appear and then compromised accounts appeared, serving up a mixture of Tumblr hosted text and login credential submission forms served up by free web hosting accounts.
Boyd said that while many of the compromised Tumblr accounts wanted users to login on the same page, many more were redirecting end-users to a fake Tumblr login website.
 The censored stolen logins. |
On one of a handful of anti-phishing sites set up by Tumblr users to fight the phishing attacks, Boyd found "8200 lines of text" related to Tumblr logins.
"Even accounting for the inevitable duplicates and fake data, that's still quite the goldmine of pilfered login credentials.”
He later said that all three domains were not available but they could well return at some point and he recommended Tumblr users to verse themselves in the art of phishing scams.
“The end game for all of this user data is still unknown, but recent data breaches indicate the attackers could seek to take advantage of password reuse across multiple sites and services, potentially breaking into emails, social network accounts and banking services for personal gain."
