A new attack pattern turns the simplest employee habit into a full fraud chain – searching for your payroll portal. Attackers used SEO poisoning to place fake payroll portals and even paid placements at the top of search results. An employee types the company payroll name into Google, clicks the top link, and lands on a site that looks identical to the real portal. The moment credentials are entered, they stream to the attacker in real time via WebSocket, and the compromise is immediate.
This isn’t old-school email phishing – this is ambush at scale. The campaign targeted mobile users deliberately – phones rarely run enterprise EDR, often aren’t logged into corporate SIEMs, and don’t show in normal incident response workflows. Attackers also routed requests through hijacked home routers and proxy chains to frustrate attribution. The result is a breach that looks like user error, not a targeted intrusion – payroll records get altered and salaries rerouted before teams can react.
Defensive posture must shift. First, assume search results can be poisoned – educate employees to bookmark the correct payroll URL and treat search clicks as risky. Second, enforce conditional access and step-up authentication for any payroll access – require device posture checks and block web sessions from unmanaged mobile devices. Third, instrument monitoring for credential use patterns – immediate use of new credentials from unexpected IP ranges or via payroll API endpoints should trigger automated lockdowns. Finally, test the full human + technical stack – simulate SEO-poisoning lures and measure end-to-end detection gaps, including mobile visibility.
At AUMINT.io we run realistic simulations that include search-based lures and mobile vectors, then map how those human failures tie into technical detection blind spots. If you want to stop payroll fraud before money moves, get a tailored walkthrough and an actionable checklist we can deploy with your team – Book a Demo
Secure payroll and close the human-tech gap today – Book a Demo