Phishing attack when selling a house Cyber thieves stole $150,000 from a woman during a real estate transaction last year, according to Lisa Vaas at Naked Security. Mireille Appert, a Swiss woman who lives in the United States, inherited her uncle’s house in Australia when he passed away in 2014. She fell victim to a phishing attack. In 2018, Appert decided to sell the house and got in touch with an Australian law firm, KF Solicitors, on July 1st. On July 18th, she received a phishing email that read, “The sellers [sic] authority just needs to be emailed back to us and not posted.” She emailed her bank details to the company in a PDF. Wrong bank account number Over the next month, Appert and her son worked with ... Read More

Phishing has moved above simple fake email Phishing has grown above and beyond email and into your online experience as a whole. This is an effort to collect personal details and share out the attack on social networks, according to a new report from Akamai Enterprise Threat Research. In a world where millennials have grown up with a device in their hand, inherently trusting everything they interact with on the web, cybercriminals are meeting victims where they are online, using a new type of phishing attack that gets the user to give up personal details. Users surfing the web are unexpectedly redirected to a “Congratulations” page with either a roulette-looking wheel or a 3-question quiz. It’s an attack designed to gather email addresses and personal information to be used ... Read More

CEO fraud nets $18.6 Million A talented group of Fraudsters used phishing, social engineering, and CEO fraud to convince the India arm of Italian engineering company Tecnimont to part with millions of dollars. We’ve all heard of phishing or whaling stories where someone is sent an email pretending to be the CEO of an organization, asking the recipient to perform an action that benefits the cybercriminal. The attack on Tecnimont takes these kinds of attacks to a new level and is something right out of a Mission: Impossible movie. A series of conference calls Chinese fraudsters sent Tecnimont’s head of India operations an email from an account that spoofed that of group CEO Pierroberto Folgiero. Rather than simply asking for money to be transferred, the cybercriminals instead arranged for not one, ... Read More

Phishing trends that persisted throughout 2018 In reviewing the Q4 2018 most clicked subject lines, Knowbe4 identified these trends. Five subject line categories appeared quarter-over-quarter throughout 2018, including: Deliveries Passwords Company Policies Vacation IT Department (in-the-wild)  (You can compare past quarterly findings here.) Additionally, three “in-the-wild subject lines” were clicked three out of four  quarters and included Amazon, Wells Fargo and Microsoft as keywords. Users are concerned about security “Clicking an email is as much about human psychology as it is about accomplishing a task,” said Perry Carpenter, chief evangelist and strategy officer at KnowBe4. “The fact that we saw ‘password’ subject lines clicked four out of four quarters shows us that users are concerned about security. Likewise, users clicked on messages about company policies and deliveries each quarter showing a general curiosity about ... Read More

Social engineering creates $1.8 Million dispute Dentons Canada LLP is locked in a $1.7 Millon dispute with its insurer after staff at the firm’s Vancouver office fell victim to an alleged social engineering attack. Here is an extract from the article with a link to the full article below: "According to Ontario Superior Court Justice Carole Brown’s recent decision in Dentons Canada LLP v. Trisura Guarantee Insurance Company, an associate at the firm was duped into transferring $2.5 million intended to clear the mortgage on a client’s property into a fraudster’s Hong Kong bank account as part of an alleged “social engineering” fraud. Transfer of funds not fraudulent Although the law firm managed to recover around $800,000, it made a claim for its net loss under a computer fraud ... Read More

The risks that worry us What keeps you up at night? These are the biggest risks facing our world in 2019. Top world leaders were surveyed for the latest edition of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report. Environmental threats dominate the list for the third year in row - both in terms of impact and likelihood. “Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe,” the report warns.  What are the Top 10 biggest ?  The report offers a unique perspective on the threats facing our world, by looking at not only those that are most likely, but also those that would have the biggest impact.  Check out #4: What worries IT leaders? When KnowBe4 recently asked IT leaders ... Read More

Tax season is new window of opportunity...for cybercriminals Experts warn of uptick in phishing attacks against businesses leveraging Office 365 as the tax season begins, tensions run high, and opportunities to trick off-guard users will be plenty. Cybercriminals want two things to exist when they attack: First, they want a gullible victim who will fall for a scam email. Second, they want either an immediate payoff, or a quick way to gain access to data that will turn into money quickly. So, the combination of Office 365 users and tax season create a volatile and dangerous mix for businesses. Phishing scams related to taxes not being filed, unexpected refunds, changes to banking details, or huge tax bills are sufficient enough to get unsuspecting users to click on malicious ... Read More