NCSC takes down top UK government impersonation scams in 2022
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NHS, HMRC, and Ofgem impersonation phishing campaigns topped UK takedowns; 6.4 million suspicious emails reported.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre has published data on the most prevalent government impersonation scams removed from the internet during 2022, based on reports to the Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS). The top targeted organisations were the NHS, TV Licensing, HMRC, Gov.uk, DVLA, and Ofgem. Cyber criminals exploited topical events—particularly the cost-of-living crisis with Ofgem energy bill support scams and HMRC tax rebate scams—to increase the credibility and effectiveness of their phishing campaigns. The service received 6.4 million reports in 2022, resulting in 67,300 scam URL takedowns.
Phishing emails and messages used false branding to direct victims to malicious sites designed to steal credentials, financial information, or to download malware. The NCSC emphasises that defenders and the public should remain vigilant for emails exploiting current events, and recommends reporting suspicious messages to SERS at [email protected] and texts to 7726. The advice includes implementing two-factor authentication, using strong three-word passphrases, researching online retailers before purchase, and using credit cards or payment platforms rather than debit cards for online transactions.
Detection guidance
Proxy Access to Lookalike UK Government Brand Domain
Flags web requests to hostnames that contain UK government or utility brand keywords (HMRC, DVLA, Ofgem, TV Licensing) but are not on the legitimate domains, a common trait of impersonation phishing sites. Auto-generated starting point — validate and tune in your environment before deploying. IOC matches can false-positive on shared infrastructure and decay as adversary infrastructure rotates.
title: Proxy Access to Lookalike UK Government Brand Domain
id: e8746e32-b10f-528d-93cc-b3e51836d7c3
status: experimental
description: Detects web requests to hostnames containing UK government or utility
brand keywords (HMRC, DVLA, Ofgem, TV Licensing) that are not served from the legitimate
gov.uk or brand domains. Impersonation phishing relies on such lookalike hosts to
harvest credentials and payment data. Triage by checking the referrer, domain age
and whether the user reached the site from an email link.
references:
- https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/ncsc-reveals-top-government-email-impersonation-scams-taken-down-in-2022
tags:
- attack.initial-access
- attack.t1566.002
- attack.reconnaissance
- attack.t1598.003
logsource:
category: proxy
detection:
selection:
cs-host|contains:
- hmrc
- tvlicensing
- tv-licensing
- ofgem
- dvla
filter_legit:
cs-host|endswith:
- .gov.uk
- .tvlicensing.co.uk
- .nhs.uk
filter_exact:
cs-host:
- tvlicensing.co.uk
- gov.uk
condition: selection and not 1 of filter_*
falsepositives:
- News, finance or comparison sites with a brand name in the hostname (for example
energy price comparison or tax advice sites)
- Legitimate third-party services that use these brand names in their own hostnames,
such as accountancy software integrations with HMRC
level: medium
author: Vorant
Behavioural rules are generated from public reporting — validate in your environment before deploying.
Source reporting: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/ncsc-reveals-top-government-email-impersonation-scams-taken-down-in-2022
What this brief leaves out
This page is the free tier: the write-up, the severity, the names. In the app the same report carries its extracted indicators, its detections (Splunk SPL already written, plus Elastic and Microsoft KQL where they apply), the actors and CVEs it names as live profiles, and the vendor research on the same campaign — the primary source the news paraphrased, cited and read directly.
It sits in a corpus of 13,854 reports from 146 sources, 616 of them written in the last seven days, and it grows through the day.
A new account starts with three days of all of it, no card, then keeps the government and CERT reporting free. Name the vendors you run and Slack hears about the reports that touch them — about forty a week that are yours, not the four hundred that are not.
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