The spam messages have been confirmed to be a phishing effort targeting Zooniverse volunteers. As stated in our recent email newsletter, this attacker impersonated the Zooniverse team by sending direct messages on Talk from accounts named ZooniverseTeam* with a trailing number (e.g., ZooniverseTeam8659). These messages were not sent by the Zooniverse platform and should be deleted. The Zooniverse platform will never request bank information, and any suspicious requests should be reported to security@zooniverse.org and/or contact@zooniverse.org -- as many of you from the Zooniverse community did!
There is no indication the attacker had any access to Zooniverse user data, or that there are any ongoing issues or anomalies affecting Zooniverse user accounts (as the phishing message claimed). Please remain vigilant against phishing attempts.
Our dev team is currently removing the spam messages and notifications and is implementing a fix to ensure this attack cannot be repeated. We expect Talk to remain down for at least 48 hours while these mitigations efforts are completed. We will update this thread again when we have a firm timeline for restoring Talk to working order -- likely late on Tuesday 18 August.
