Test your users' gullibility to social engineering Stephanie Carruthers, People Hacker for IBM- X-Force Red wrote an excellent post on why you should social engineer your own organization. I'll quote the first paragraph or so, and you should read the rest of the article, it makes an excellent point for the need to "social engineer your employees" and assess the strength of your human firewall! "It was one of the highest phishing rates I had ever seen: Almost 60 percent of employees clicked the malicious link. Yet the client, a chief information security officer (CISO) of a Fortune 100 company, asked a question that caught me completely off-guard. “So what?” he said, clearly unimpressed. As a “people hacker” for X-Force Red, IBM Security’s team of veteran hackers, I’ve performed social ... Read More

Cybersecurity training kids can understand KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform is offering an interactive, no-cost, children’s cybersecurity activity kit to the public. A workbook, poster and video module available to help families teach children how to protect themselves from online dangers The activity kit consists of two workbooks with puzzles and games, a poster and a video module featuring KnowBe4’s security awareness hero Captain Awareness. The workbook also includes a cyber hero pledge consisting of helpful tips to help children stay safe online, along with a family agreement that parents can review with their children to set guidelines for using online devices. Concrete tools With this activity kit, parents, teachers and other guardians have some concrete tools to help teach their children about online ... Read More

Anatova game tricks users into downloading ransomware The anatova ransomware strain was discovered in a private peer-to-peer (p2p) network and targets consumers by using the icon of a game or application to trick the user into downloading it. McAfee researchers today announced the discovery of a new ransomware family, “Anatova” that is targeting consumers at scale across the globe. The ransomware was discovered in a private peer-to-peer (p2p) network and targets consumers by using the icon of a game or application to trick the user into downloading it. Creating a quick and fast piece of ransomware is fairly easy Beek, Lead Scientist & Principle Engineer at McAfee said, “Creating a quick and fast piece of ransomware is fairly easy for those with basic know-how. Ransomware packed with functionality that is also ... Read More

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