Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Urging taxpayers and tax professionals to be vigilant, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides some simple guidance on how to spot new scams aimed at being able to file fake tax returns. Apparently, there are actually three certainties in life: death, taxes and scams revolving around taxes. This according to the IRS, as part of their annual Security Summit. As with any major event that has the attention of millions of people simultaneously, tax season is no exception.

Taking traditional “delayed package” scams up a notch, new phishing and smishing attack campaigns are leveraging freemium DNS services to avoid detection by security solutions. In some ways, the old adage “there’s nothing new under the sun” seems to be holding up. Take the latest USPS impersonation scam identified by domain monitoring vendor Bolster. It follows many of the same steps and uses similar tactics as any of the USPS scams I’ve covered before.

Security analysts at identity vendor Sumsub are seeing a massive rise in the use of deepfake fraud in their Identity Fraud Report 2023. And one country may be to blame. While Sumsub’s focus is more around all forms of identity security, it's witnessing a significant increase in deepfakes, as deepfakes are a form of identity fraud. According to Sumsub, the top three fraud trends identified were: The approximate overall growth rate worldwide for the use of deepfakes is 10x.

Read also: TrickBot dev faces up to 35 years in prison, Platypus hackers walk free in France, and more.

A phishing campaign is impersonating Disney+ with phony invoices, according to researchers at Abnormal Security. The phishing emails targeted individuals at 22 organizations in September. “The first step in this multi-stage attack is a seemingly auto-generated notification email informing the target of a pending charge for their new Disney+ subscription,” the researchers explain.

You should place a fraud alert if you believe you are a victim of fraud or may become one, if you are a victim of identity theft or if you want to prevent your identity from being stolen. You don’t necessarily have to be a victim of fraud to place a fraud alert, you can also place a fraud alert as a security precaution. Continue reading to learn more about what a fraud alert is, how it differs from a credit freeze and how to place a fraud alert on your credit report.

Information security requirements and standards are in a constant state of evolution. Recent issues, such as COVID-19 and the growing global reliance on mobile devices and remote work solutions, have played important roles in this ongoing transformation. At the same time, the increasing sophistication of cyber attackers has added new layers of complexity to the cybersecurity landscape.

It’s natural to want to believe that every new account creation or online purchase signals the legitimate growth of your business. But the alarming rise in financial and data losses attributed to fraud, suggests a different reality. There are thousands of bad actors actively looking to nickel and dime businesses and consumers. In 2022, a staggering 2.4 million fraud reports flooded the Consumer Sentinel Record.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... hopefully something better than a virus (computer or otherwise). As the end of the year is fast approaching, it has not been without its fair share of data breaches, hacks, and even the return of digital piracy. As we enter December and fast approaching the most wonderful time of the year, hackers, cybercriminals, and online fraudsters are looking to end the year with a bang.