Taxpayers receive mass of fake emails allegedly on behalf of the State Tax Service of Ukraine. Subject of such emails is alleged “financial check” regarding money laundering.

In fact, these messages have nothing to do with the Tax Service. They are sent from the third-party email addresses and contain links or attachments with malicious software.

Be careful – opening such files can lead to infection of your computer and provide attackers with hidden access to it.

Reminder: all official e-mail addresses of the Service have the domain @tax.gov.ua and official mail of the State Tax Service is post@tax.gov.ua. If letter comes from another domain, this is a clear sign of forgery.

Characteristic feature of such emails is presence of attached files .pdf, .zip, .rar, as well as files with extension .exe, .scr. Attackers mislead the user into opening the attachment.

Typically, such attachments contain hidden software to gain remote access to the user’s device.

Taxpayers are urged to follow basic rules of cyber hygiene:

- do not open suspicious attachments,

- check sender’s address,

- do not trust even familiar contacts without additional confirmation.