Phishing Scams use Microsoft Visio Files to Steal Information

The latest phishing attacks involve users being victimised in private information scams through the use of Microsoft Visio files. According to a security firm called Perception Point, the trick mainly involves using the .vsdx file extension, used for business diagrams and flowcharts. It has been found that cyber attackers can embed malicious links in Visio files to circumvent most of the traditional checks a secured system carries out on users.

In particular, Microsoft Visio files are less often encountered by users due to being not as well known as other attachment types, for instance, PDFs or Word documents. This means that the files of the type Visio would be less likely to be considered suspicious by a security system, making them a good target for hackers who send phishing links secretly. All of this aside, Visio files themselves are transmitted via email attachments, which most users trust because they are all Microsoft tools.

This is how the particular phishing scheme unfolds, according to Perception Point:

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