Phishing

Spear Phishing: The Greatest Threat to Democracy

by Brad | Jul 30, 2019 | Phishing

What’s the greatest threat to democracy today? How about election results that can’t be trusted because the election was manipulated by hackers. Hackers who began their attack with a spear phishing campaign. It’s happened before. It will almost certainly happen again.

Manipulating campaigns is now part of the election process. And the number of ways it can be manipulated is scary to think about. It could be as simple as hijacking a social media account to post fake election results. Or, it could be a sinister as hijacking a county website and posting fake voting instructions about where, when and how to vote. And no matter what form it takes, it will almost certainly start with a spear phishing attack.

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Reeling in a Different Kind of Phish at Sea

by Brad | Jul 26, 2019 | Phishing

Fishing can be a very profitable enterprise. Many commercial fishing fleets head out to sea each day hoping to land a big catch. Now these same boat owners have to be careful the big catch doesn’t land them. 

According to an article on the Hot for Security website, “An alert released on Monday cautions that hackers have actively been targeting the networks of commercial vessels with phishing attacks. A similar alert had been issued in May when cybercriminals resorted to phishing to steal sensitive information about the ships and their itineraries.” 

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Is Paying Ransom Being Considered As The Best Way Out For Dealing With Ransomware Attacks

by Brad | Jul 20, 2019 | Phishing

Phishing has been on the rise in form or the other, ever since users have started to use emails, messages, phones, etc. Every other month, around 1.5 million new phishing sites are created by cyber-criminals and add to the growing cybercrime world. Several of these sites employ ransomware as a tactic in order to extort money from unsuspecting users who accidentally click on a fraudulent link in an email or text message sent to them.

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Death, Taxes and the Evolution of Phishing Attacks

by Brad | Jul 18, 2019 | Phishing

They say nothing is certain in life except for death and taxes. You can add one more to that list: phishing attacks. Hackers continue to do their homework and innovate as the number one cybersecurity threat refuses to be contained.

According to an article on the Dark Reading website, “Email continues to be an extremely effective vector for delivering malicious content because of how adept attackers have become at tricking users over the years.”

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When the Department of Homeland Security isn’t so Secure

by Brad | Jul 10, 2019 | Phishing

From its website, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) mission is “to secure the nation from the many threats we face.” In essence, the DHS’s job is to create trust, for Americans, in their own security. So, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that hackers would try to exploit that trust by launching an email phishing scam that impersonates email alerts from the DHS.

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Ever Heard of an Angler Phishing Attack?

by Brad | Jul 9, 2019 | Phishing

You wouldn’t put up a neon sign outside your home that says “rob this house” before you left for a week’s vacation.  The last thing you want to do is give a crook a heads up. But that’s exactly what people unwittingly do when they post complaints about companies they do business within their social media accounts.

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Five Phishing Tactics Sure to Trick You Into Clicking

by Brad | Jul 3, 2019 | Phishing

By now, most people know that 91% of cyberattacks start with a phishing email. In recognition of this, companies are now beginning to offer security awareness training. According to an article on the website Dark Reading, “45% of organizations provide employees mandatory, formal cybersecurity training; another 10% give optional training.”

The objective is simple: teach employees not to click on the links in suspicious emails. Given the sophisticated nature of some phishing exploits today, that’s easier said than done. With that in mind, we present five phishing tactics being used today that are sure to trick you into clicking, no matter how much awareness training you’ve received.

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Everyone Loves PDFs Including Hackers

by Brad | Jul 2, 2019 | Phishing

If you’re doing business, then you’re sending, receiving and reading PDFs.

PDFs have become ubiquitous in business as a way of sending documents over the web. And why not? There are a lot of advantages to using PDFs. For starters, it’s ubiquitous—everyone has a PDF reader. The files can include embedded links and images. The files tend to be small compared to other formats. They can be password protected. They can work on any operating system. And they’re not likely to go away any time soon.

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The Problems With Paying a Phishing Ransom

by Brad | Jun 26, 2019 | Phishing

If you haven’t been paying attention, a lot of organizations have been hit by ransomware lately, almost all of which are triggered by a phishing email. Hackers use all types of exploits to extract money from their victims too. Their favorite, by far, is to encrypt the victim’s hard drive with a promise to decrypt it if the ransom is paid, usually in something untraceable like Bitcoin.

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Phishing Prevention: If Users are the Weakest Link, Why is Training the Only Solution?

by Brad | Jun 25, 2019 | Phishing

In cybersecurity, there’s a best practice called Defense in Depth. The idea behind Defense in Depth is very simple. Put up a bunch of different types of barriers instead of just relying on one. This way, no matter what attack vector the enemy chooses, you’re covered.

Defense in depth is a pretty sound cybersecurity strategy, one which many companies employ, except for when it comes to phishing protection.

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Phishing Awareness Training is Getting Some Large Investments

by Brad | Jun 20, 2019 | Phishing

It sure is a good time to be in the phishing awareness training business, especially if you’re looking for investors to invest in your company. A couple of multimillion dollar deals were announced just last week.

First, “start-up security awareness firm CybeReady has expanded into the U.S. market with an initial funding round of $5 million led by Baseline Ventures,” according to an article on Security Week website.

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Phishing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Google

by Brad | Jun 14, 2019 | Phishing

Google is great. It offers a lot of useful services for free. And those services are tightly integrated so they work well together.

Google services are also used by a lot of people. According to an article on Forbes.com, “Google’s Gmail email service is used by upwards of 1.5 billion people. The Google Calendar app, meanwhile, has been downloaded more than a billion times from the Play Store”

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Some Truly Startling Phishing Statistics

by Brad | Jun 12, 2019 | Phishing

Which phishing statistic is scarier? That 94% of organizations say they were hit with a phishing attack in 2018 or that the attacks themselves may be underreported, even when it’s required by law?

How about 42% of public sector organizations had been hit with a disruptive ransomware attack in the last month? LAST MONTH!

What about the cost of these attacks? The city of Baltimore, which was hit with a ransomware attack but refused to pay the $80,000 ransom, has spent $18 million trying to recover. And it’s not just money.

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SaaS Makes Business Easier and More Vulnerable

by Brad | Jun 6, 2019 | Phishing

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is being used more and more to deliver mission critical services to business of all sizes. SaaS provides tremendous benefits to businesses, including eliminating the need for a software development team and eliminating expensive patching and upgrades. Examples of SaaS services include customer relationship management (CRM), eCommerce, storage and email delivery.

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How Perfectly Safe Emails From Trusted Parties Suddenly Turn Dangerous

by Brad | May 21, 2019 | Phishing

When you think of phishing attacks, you think about some hacker directly sending you a malicious email with the hope that you’ll trust them and click on a link or download a file. But, people are getting wise to phishing emails, because there’s plenty of phishing awareness training out there.

The bottom line is, people have their radar up now for phishing emails and it takes a lot for them to let their guard down. Of course hackers know this, so, unfortunately, they’ve upped their game too. (more…)

Phishing Attacks: Top Executives Better be Worried

by Brad | May 14, 2019 | Phishing

If you’re in the C-suite, you’d better get yourself some phishing protection. The hackers are coming after you, and they’re not going to stop because you’re just too lucrative a target.

According to the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, social engineering attacks were up last year against C-level executives. Further amplifying the point, an article on SC Magazine website went on to say, “Compared to previous years covered by the report, C-level executives last year were 12 times more likely to be the target of a social engineering incident and nine times more likely to be the target in a breach caused by social engineering.”

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Compromised Microsoft Credentials is Code for They Got Phished

by Brad | Apr 18, 2019 | Phishing

If you haven’t already heard, Hackers compromised Microsoft support agent’s credentials to access customer email accounts, according to an article on TechCrunch. The article states that “Microsoft has confirmed to TechCrunch that a certain limited number of people who use web email services managed by Microsoft — which cover services like @msn.com and @hotmail.com — had their accounts compromised.”

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