- Hackers leveraged Zendesk’s ticketing system to send mass spam emails from legitimate domains
- Major companies, including Discord, Tinder, Riot Games and Dropbox, affected by the campaign.
- Zendesk introduced monitoring and limits to stop relay spam and protect users
Hackers hijacked the Zendesk support system and used it for a seemingly absolutely chaotic and pointless spam campaign.
Zendesk is a customer service and support software platform that helps businesses manage customer communication. Supports tickets, live chat, email, phone, and social media communication. Among its features is the ability to allow unverified users to submit support tickets which, when that happens, automatically generates a confirmation email and sends it to the email the user entered.
Now, researchers say hackers combed through huge lists of email addresses and created countless fake support tickets, turning the feature into a massive spam tool.
Zendesk customers are affected
The list of affected companies is apparently huge and includes some of the biggest ones: Discord, Tinder, Riot Games, Dropbox, CD Projekt, NordVPN, the Tennessee Department of Labor, the Tennessee Department of Revenue, and many others.
Since emails originate from a legitimate Zendesk system, they bypass most spam filters and land directly in people’s inboxes. Some people, according beepcomputerreceived “hundreds” of emails in a very short time.
The campaign started on January 18, but we don’t know if it’s still going. What is particularly strange about this campaign is that it does not distribute malware or phishing links. These are just emails purporting to be cries for help or removal requests from authorities, which do nothing but flood victims’ inboxes.
Here are some subject lines:
FREE NITRO DISCORD!!
WITHDRAW YOUR ORDER NOW FROM CD Projekt
LEGAL NOTICE FROM ISRAEL FOR koei Tecmo
WITHDRAW YOUR ORDER NOW FROM Israel FOR Square Enix
Zendesk said beepcomputer addressed the problem by introducing new security features.
“We have introduced new security features to address relay spam, including enhanced monitoring and limits designed to detect unusual activity and stop it more quickly,” the company said.
“We want to assure everyone that we are actively taking steps (and continually improving) to protect our platform and our users.”
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