As a follow-up to the alarming messages from the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in relevance to the rise of QR code scamming, a world-renowned cybersecurity entity “welivesecurity” have helped to list out some of the most common scam tactics from the fraudsters.

A)    Redirect you to malicious website to steal sensitive information

Example: Austin USA public parking meters’ fraudulent QR code stickers discovered in January 2022.

B)     Download a malicious file on your device

Example: Instead of downloading menus from restaurants, attacker may temper with QR code stickers to download malicious PDF that looked like a menu instead.

C)     Steal user identity or access to application

Example: With attacks such as “QRLjacking”, attackers can trick a user by impersonating the identity of the service and tricking the user into scanning the QR they thought is intended for authenticating user sessions.

For more information on how to protect yourselves from the surge of QR code malpractices from fraudsters, please visit: https://www.welivesecurity.com/2022/02/04/think-before-scan-how-fraudsters-exploit-qr-codes/