By Jaeson Schultz and Matt Valites.
As students return to school for in-person and virtual learning, Cisco Talos discovered an increase in DNS requests coming into Umbrella resolving domains we classify as "academic fraud." Data from Pew Research on back-to-school dates aligns with the growth we observed in queries to these malicious domains. The figure below shows that queries to academic fraud domains nearly quadrupled starting the week of Aug. 12, the most popular week to start schools in the US. When we compared these numbers with data from the same time last year, we noted an approximately 4x increase in requests for domains classified as "academic fraud." These sites have risen dramatically in popularity in 2020 as more and more students have moved to virtual learning.
A graph of DNS requests for "Academic Fraud"-related domain names.
While unlike the other types of fraud Talos regularly deals with (phishing, malvertising, bank fraud, etc.), academic fraud does share some remarkable similarities with other types of fraud, especially social engineering. When navigating to these domains, you can never be 100 percent sure what you'll get. Users may receive the services they intend to purchase, or criminals may take advantage of these users' need for help, and ..
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