Three out of four Black Friday-themed spam emails are scams, according to researchers at Bitdefender. Most of these scams are targeting users in the US and Europe. “This year, 77% of all Black Friday-themed spam (by volume) analyzed by Bitdefender’s Antispam Lab team was classified as scams, while only 22% was identified as marketing lures—emails designed to drive traffic to legitimate but overly aggressive promotions,” the researchers write.

We are excited to see the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and outgoing Director Jen Easterly strongly recommend PHISHING-RESISTANT multi-factor authentication (MFA). The majority of people, including the majority of cybersecurity practitioners, do not know that most MFA…especially the most popular types used today (e.g., one-time passwords, pushed-based, SMS-based, etc.), can be as easily phished or bypassed as the passwords they were intended to replace.

A new survey of hackers shows that AI is not only empowering hackers to be more effective, but that AI itself is “ripe for exploitation.” Rarely do we get to ask a hacker “what do you think” when it comes to cyber attacks, cybersecurity efforts, and what they think the future will hold. But Bugcrowd’s 2024 Inside the Mind of a Hacker Report (which surveyed 1300 hackers) hosts a treasure trove of data around how hackers see AI and the value it brings.

Analysis of a new phishing attack highlight just how easy it can be to spot these kinds of attacks if recipients were properly educated. Action Fraud, the U.K.’s national fraud & cyber reporting center, recently warned U.K. residents of a scam impersonating Starbucks.

A phishing campaign is impersonating HR to target employees who are making annual insurance changes during the open enrollment period, according to researchers at Abnormal Security. The attackers are using legitimate notifications from Dropbox to send phishing messages, asking recipients to view a document on Dropbox regarding annual salary increases and open enrollment elections.

The threat group FIN7 is using the lure of generating nude images of favorite celebrities to get victims to download their NetSupport RAT. In any social engineering scam, there’s always the need to create some sense of urgency to act in order to make the potential victim take an action that enables the attack. In the case of a new attack by threat group FIN7, the urgency appears to be the desire to see deepfake nude images.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) recently released a report Occupational Fraud 2024: A Report to the Nations, where they estimated that most organizations lose about 5% of their revenue each year due to fraud. We have joined in our support of International Fraud Awareness Week and applaud the ACFE and their efforts to help raise awareness and reduce fraud that hurts all of us, whether we work for these organizations or are consumers of the goods and services they provide.

The Swiss National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned of a QR code phishing (quishing) campaign that’s targeting people in Switzerland via physical letters sent through the mail, Malwarebytes reports. The letters purport to come from the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss), asking recipients to scan a QR code to install a new app for severe weather warnings.

As the holiday shopping season kicks into high gear, cybercriminals are gearing up too. This year, alongside the usual suspects, we're seeing some crafty new scams, so let’s take a look at some of the ones you should be most careful of during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. AI-Generated Fake Reviews AI has allowed scammers to flood product pages with well-written and convincing fake reviews of products.

A new and concerning cybersecurity trend has emerged. According to the latest Q3 2024 Cato CTRL SASE Threat Report from Cato Networks, ransomware gangs are now actively recruiting penetration testers to enhance the effectiveness of their attacks. This development signals a significant shift in the tactics employed by cybercriminals and underscores the need for organizations to remain vigilant in their defense strategies.

The newly released single largest analysis of cyber attacks across all of 2023 show a strong tie between the use of phishing and techniques designed to gain credentialed access. I’ve stood on the “phishing is a problem” soapbox for many years, attempting to focus the attention of cybersecurity teams on the single largest problem within the organization: the employees that fall for social engineering tactics time and time again.

About five years ago, I was having trouble with an expensive brand-name refrigerator that my wife and I had bought. It was a great refrigerator feature-wise. My wife and I initially loved it. But it kept breaking. And each break, even though it was covered by the warranty, took weeks and weeks to repair.

Cybersecurity threats grow more sophisticated by the day. Amid this constant change, one truth remains: people are simultaneously our greatest security vulnerability and our strongest line of defense. It’s time to empower organizations with a new approach that minimizes human risk and maximizes protection.

New data shows just how crippling ransomware has been on small businesses that have fallen victim to an attack and needed to pay the ransom. Logic would normally dictate that ransomware gangs are going to go after the “big fishes” – the larger organizations with deep pockets. But with the advent of the “as a service” model of ransomware, threat actors have found a niche, with many of them focusing on businesses with 1 to 50 employees.

Threat actors are exploiting Microsoft Visio files and SharePoint to launch two-step phishing attacks, according to researchers at Perception Point. “Perception Point’s security researchers have observed a dramatic increase in two-step phishing attacks leveraging.vsdx files – a file extension rarely used in phishing campaigns until now,” the researchers explain.

Researchers at IBM X-Force are tracking a phishing campaign by the criminal threat actor “Hive0145” that’s using stolen invoice notifications to trick users into installing malware. Hive0145 acts as an initial access broker, selling access to compromised organizations to other threat actors who then carry out additional cyberattacks.

In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) has created new opportunities for risk. It is crucial to understand that this powerful combination is also being weaponized by cybercriminals, presenting unprecedented challenges for organizations worldwide.

A new report from ESET has found that most nation-state threat actors rely on spear phishing as a primary initial access technique. In the second and third quarters of 2024, state-sponsored APTs from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea used social engineering attacks to compromise their targets. Iranian threat actors continued conducting cyber espionage against countries across the Middle East, Europe, and the US. They also expanded their targeting to hit financial companies in Africa.

The latest trend in cybercrime is that attackers don't really focus on “hacking” in; they’re logging in. We see this now in the wild, driven by organized criminal groups like Scattered Spider and BlackCat, who’ve reemerged with a renewed focus on gaining access through legitimate means, often exploiting help desks and social engineering tactics.

Threat actors are abusing DocuSign’s API to send phony invoices that appear “strikingly authentic,” according to researchers at Wallarm. “Unlike traditional phishing scams that rely on deceptively crafted emails and malicious links, these incidents use genuine DocuSign accounts and templates to impersonate reputable companies, catching users and security tools off guard,” Wallarm says.

Cybercriminals are impersonating OpenAI in a widespread phishing campaign designed to trick users into handing over financial information. The emails inform users that a payment for their ChatGPT subscription was declined, inviting them to click a link in order to update their payment method. The phishing emails appear fairly convincing, but trained users could spot some red flags. The most obvious giveaway is that the emails were sent from “info@mtacom,” which is clearly unrelated to OpenAI.

Attackers are abusing Eventbrite’s scheduling platform to send phishing emails, according to researchers at Perception Point. These attacks increased by 900% between July and October 2024. “Perception Point researchers observed phishing emails delivered via ‘noreply@events.eventbritecom,’” the researchers write.

ReliaQuest warns that the BlackBasta ransomware gang is using new social engineering tactics to obtain initial access within corporate networks. The threat actor begins by sending mass email spam campaigns targeting employees, then adding people who fall for the emails to Microsoft Teams chats with external users. These external users pose as IT support or help desk staff, and send employees Microsoft Teams messages containing malicious QR codes.

Over a decade ago, I noticed that social engineering was the primary cause for all malicious hacking. It has been that way since the beginning of computers, but it took me about half of my 36-year career to realize it. At the time, I think everyone in cybersecurity knew social engineering was a big part of why hackers and their malware programs were so successful, but no one really knew how big.

When you think of KnowBe4, you might immediately picture phishing simulations, password security modules, or other security awareness training topics. But today, we're celebrating a milestone that showcases just how far our Compliance Plus training offering has come: we've reached 5 million learners and over 10,000 customers worldwide! Compliance Plus offers training content that is typically boring, stale and drawn.

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are facing unprecedented challenges. The combination of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, persistent talent shortages, and complex regulatory requirements has led many organizations to rethink their approach to cybersecurity. As a result, we're seeing a significant shift towards outsourcing key security functions to managed service providers.

Cybersecurity is all about risk management and reduction. You cannot get rid of all risk. Well, I guess you could, but you (and everyone else) would probably not want to work in a true zero-risk environment. It would be too locked down, super slow, and incredibly inflexible. Cybersecurity is all about identifying the most likely and impactful risks and reducing them. To repeat, cybersecurity is about risk management. Identify the biggest risks and mitigate those the best you can. That is your job.