Quote:Scammers handling a phishing website for Office 365 credentials added live support to add to the illusion of legitimacy necessary to trick victims.

But things don't always work the way the cybercriminals intend and their bluff was called by security researchers spotting the scam a mile away.

Live chat support is nothing new in the world of fraud. It became popular with cybercriminal groups in the ransomware business that wanted to help their victims pay the ransom in bitcoin.

However, its application in phishing fraud is rare. Security researcher Justin Miller, the author of the Phishing Kit Tracker, a collection of emails from 500 phishing kits, says that he's probably seen less than ten cases of phishing where chat was available.

This particular Office 365 phishing fraud was discovered by security researcher Michael Gillespie and starts with an email impersonating a Microsoft alert for renewing the subscription for the Office suite of services.