Joseph, a Social Engineering Threat Actor, Impersonating Tech Support + Calculator App Malware

I spoke with a representative named Joseph, from tech support, this week. He never gained access to my computer, nor asked for remote troubleshooting capacities (which I would have denied him). Even though I was just asking general questions for confirmation, he asked for my computer's serial number, which I declined. He asked out of the blue. When I said "no", he said "hum". With my serial number, he can enroll my device in Google Workspace access.

Because he did that, I asked him a different question, that I wasn't planning on, it wasn't on my list, but I asked anyways, because he triggered a Social Engineering flag: his question combined with two other factors at play, that seemed off from what I would expect. When digging, (a) always trust your intuition, and (b) clinically and diagnostically, specific flags lead to clusters which lead to what may be going on, and where to probe.

The different question, was about malware in Calculator Apps.

He was smug. He did his best not to laugh at me. He said they don't exist, and he'd never heard of them. BINGO. I caught him.

Being overconfident, and rude to others, is an anti-social feature. This man, either was attempting to illegally steal information from his company's clients, which would be against his contract, or he was an impersonator. I called the company, got a weird recording, then he called me back. I did a little digging, and found a US company that has an API, which predicts user actions, and uploads the victim's data to their B2B client's custom app. This data, can tell the developer which website to copy, and where to set-up his impersonation trap, for profit.

You can read the Forbes article about Calculator App below, and FTC's Impersonation Reports, here: FTC Imposter Scams

Forbes Calculator App Malware