Cyber Attack on Bayyinah TV

Bayyinah TV was hacked recently, which caused the subscribers to experience a phishing attack.

Phishing Email Analysis

• Date: 26th September 2022
• Sender Email Address: Bayyinah – [email protected] – This is the official email address of Bayyinah TV.
• Subject: Bayyinah TV
• Email Body:
  • The email used the same email template as the official Bayyinah TV emails.
  • The email mentioned the correct full names of the recipients in the email body.
  • The email contained a short URL, which led to a malicious URL.
• The phishing email was well constructed with no spelling or grammatical mistakes. It was very difficult for the common recipient to suspect it as a phishing email.

Rectification

On 29th September 2022, The Bayyinah TV Team sent an email to its subscribers, informing them that Bayyinah’s email was hacked and they have now secured their systems. No further details were provided. Nothing about this attack was posted on their social profiles. The Short URL has been blocked.

Reactions

Subscribers have reported receiving the phishing email and some clicked on the link.

Hack Analysis

It looks like the hacker got access to Bayyinah’s email marketing service. It is possible that he made a copy of the full names and email addresses of all Bayyinah subscribers during this hack. If more information about the subscribers was stored in the Bayyinah’s email marketing service then that could have been copied as well. If this is the case then Bayyinah should declare it and inform the subscribers to stay vigilant for phishing attempts in the future.

Recommendations

• If you clicked on the short URL then scan your system with a well reputed antivirus for any possible presence of a malware.
• If you downloaded anything from that URL then remove it from your devices.
• Stay vigilant for any further phishing emails. If the hacker was able to copy your information from Bayyinah’s email marketing service then it could be available on the dark web by now and could be used by the same or other hackers in the future to target you.

About the Speaker(s)/Author(s): Nauman Khan is a software engineer from Multan, Pakistan. He is the founder of The Clear Evidence initiative, urShadow’s Blog, which is ranked among the top 30 blogs for Saudi Arabia and one of the largest Facebook groups in Saudi Arabia. He completed his schooling from Multan and then completed his engineering from Islamabad, Pakistan. Since then he has been working in the technology domain for the leading corporations in the telecommunication industry in the Middle East region. He developed his first website in 2000 with a section on Islam. In 2008, he launched urShadow’s Blog with Come to Islam section, which has over 1,400 posts. In 2019, he launched The Clear Evidence initiative. For more details: Nauman Khan – LinkedIn