Cybercriminals have developed a sophisticated new scam involving fabricated corporate chat rooms and a counterfeit “Gosuslugi” (Public Services) bot, aiming to trick individuals into compromising their personal accounts.
In this latest scheme, fraudsters impersonate company executives, initiating deceptive chats with employees. They instruct staff to “digitize” personnel records or remove inactive workers from the system. To lend credibility to these demands and “verify” the details, victims are cunningly directed to interact with a seemingly official “Gosuslugi” bot operating on Telegram.
The fraudulent process begins when victims are prompted to click a provided link, activate the bot, and then input their phone number. Subsequently, a six-digit verification code is dispatched via SMS to the user`s phone. Crucially, the scammers then insist that this code must be immediately shared within the chat, falsely asserting it is an essential step to complete the “digitization procedure.” Once the victim, unaware of the peril, provides this critical code, the criminals swiftly gain complete and unauthorized access to their personal “Gosuslugi” account, potentially leading to identity theft and other serious financial or personal data breaches.
This recent discovery follows earlier warnings about other ingenious data theft methods, such as a two-stage scam involving an offer to receive a personal intercom code, highlighting the persistent and evolving threat posed by cybercriminals.
Clement Ashworth 
Barnaby Whitfield