Another Day, Another Discord Phishing Scam

On Teh Republic of Leroystan Discord server, fellow Neocities' user, Heather posted a link to a Twitter thread informing people of a sexy new phishing scam hitting Discord. If this is affecting you, then please read the Twitter thread first and this later.

I do remember using Skype, and almost everyday I would get a new message from a sex bot, advertising someone's terrible website. I wish I sill had the Skype transcripts, as I would publish them, but alas, they are all gone now. Discord is much better when it comes to bad bots, over the past three years I've been using the app, I have got no messages from any bad, unwanted bots, saying this, my friend has had some messages from bots, and as far as I'm aware, he has not made any of his Discord tags public, unlike myself, where I freely advertise my Discord username a fair bit.

So, what is this new phishing scam and how does it work? Simply put, you will get a message from someone on your friends' list, saying that they have a link that will be able to give you free access to Discord Nitro, a premium subscription service for the app. Do not click on this link, the person sending the link has been hacked, and their account has been taken over by a bot, as they fell for the link. The end game for the bot is to go through a person's PMs, server members, and group-chats, sending the same message in hopes of tricking more people for the phishing scam, so the bot can get hold of their account, so then more people can fool for this, etc, etc. The circle of life.

Examples of what the message will look like.

Ay bro I know we ain't talk in awhile but I thought you might find this interesting? https://discordgg.ga/nitro/nA94n19amD9a4

The second example.

Yo, my firend just sent me this referral link for nitro - https://dicordgg.ga/nitro/nA94n19amD9a4 You should be able to get it for free - it worked for me anyway

The idea of the link is to trick people into thinking it is a legit Discord URL, it is not. The URL is trying to look like "discord dot gg", a real Discord URL, however, the URL is really "discord gg dot ga", a fake.

If you clicked the link at the time, then you would have been lead to a fake login page, this isn't all that new, as fake login pages have been a thing for sometime. Once you enter your username and password, you will be unable to log into your account, as a bot is now in control of it. The bot will lock you out by changing the password and the E-Mail adress.

So, what can you do? There are two small, simple things you can do. The first is set-up a two factor authentication on your Discord account (while you're at it, also do this for your other non-Discord accounts like Twitter, Google, etc). Next, when someone sends you a link, do read the full URL, if it looks off, do not click it. If you do get this type of message sent to you, please report, block, and ignore it.

As of publication, the site has been killed, however, it is still important to know the risks and how to stop them, as an event like this can happen again.

If you are still unsure, remember this, Discord (or any other company) would never ask you to log in to your account, while you are still logged in to it.

Written by Clive "James" Python, 2019-06-26.

I. The Twitter thread
https://twitter.com/splitsplatted/status/1143556748638375937

II. The scam site, now nuked to Hell and back
https://web.archive.org/web/20190621022806/https://discordgg.ga/ [archive.is]

III. The status of the scam site
https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/dicordgg.ga.html