Question: What happens when you try to make money off an international crisis by posing as a former Navy signals intelligence guy? Answer: Not much. Just back from Ukraine, Malcolm Nance is a high profile legionnaire, which made him a target for scammers. 

Typosquatting is a social engineering strategy that manipulates web addresses and other key identifiers on social media. When you overlook the easy-to-miss “typos” (an L becomes a 1 or an “A” becomes a similar letter from a different character set) the scam is whatever the threat actor chooses. In this instance, Malcolm Nance was targeted on Twitter, and the scammers were out to make a quick buck. 

Listen in as we hear about Nance’s experience in the Ukraine war theater, and the nuisance attacks that were spotted pretty much right away by his more than one million followers. Pro tip for dumb hackers: This is not the spy you’re looking for. 

This week’s Tin Foil Swan breaks down typosquatting so you can spot a scam like a SIGINT pro. 

 

Adam Levin is the former Director of Consumer Affairs for the State of New Jersey, serial entrepreneur and author of Swiped, which he wrote with his sidekick, writer and cyber mensch, Beau Friedlander. With expert commentary from Travis “Here’s What Actually Happened” Taylor, the show gets everything sorted out—or not—but either way you’re going to have a great time. Something weird happen to you? We’ve got your back.

What the Hack with Adam Levin is a production of Loud Tree Media and is produced by Andrew Steven and Beau Friedlander.