Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Legitimate services can be exploited in social engineering, including business email compromise (BEC) attacks. Researchers at Check Point describe one current BEC campaign that’s using Soda PDF to send messages encouraging the recipients to call a phone number. Should they make the call, the bad actor on the line seeks to winkle them out of their cash. Check Point calls these kinds of attempts, which “leverage legitimate services to send out malicious material,” BEC 3.0.

A survey by PasswordManager.com has found that one in three job seekers has fallen for, and responded to, fake job scams over the past two years. “Nearly 4 in 10 respondents, all of whom have searched for a job within the last two years, say they’ve encountered job postings that turned out to be a scam,” the researchers write.

The recent conviction of a U.K. man for cyber crimes committed in 2018 brings to light a cyber attack where this attacker manually performed the “in-the-middle” part of an attack. We’ve all heard of a “Man-in-the-Middle” (MitM) attack – also more recently called a “Manipulator-in-the-Middle” attack.

Details from a simple impersonation phishing attack show how well thought out these attacks really are in order to heighten their ability to fool victims and harvest credentials. Credential harvesting scams are pretty simple at face value: send an email that links to a spoofed login page/website, and let the credentials roll on in.

A phishing campaign is spoofing the major German media conference Anga Com, according to Jeremy Fuchs at Avanan. “A central part of any conference for a company is to garner interest for their company,” Fuchs explains. “Many conferences will give over lead lists for companies to follow up on. This can be a significant source of potential revenue for companies. This is not the usual fare for hackers.

The French government is taking a stand against the increasing threat of digital warfare. Publicly accusing Russia of conducting an extensive online manipulation campaign, France is fighting back against typosquatting of major media outlets and the French Foreign Ministry. The goal of these fake websites is to spread disinformation and confusion about the ongoing war in Ukraine.

While artificial intelligence (AI) has been the hot topic of this year, a theme that I continue to see is that AI is being used for good and evil. I'm going to dive more into key takeaways your organization can learn from Catherine Williams, Threat Intelligence Specialist at Telecom giant BT. Get her insights on AI being on two sides of the battlefield, and why everyone should start integrating cybersecurity in their everyday tasks now.

Microsoft describes a sophisticated phishing campaign that targeted several financial organizations. “Microsoft Defender Experts uncovered a multi-stage adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attack against banking and financial services organizations,” the researchers write. “The attack originated from a compromised trusted vendor and transitioned into a series of AiTM attacks and follow-on BEC activity spanning multiple organizations.

As government-sponsored and widespread vulnerability attacks continue to result in larger damages, cyber insurers are looking for opportunities to still meet demand without incurring risk. It may come as a surprise, but cyber insurers aren’t in the business of issuing (and covering) cyber insurance policies; they’re in the business of staying in business. And that means identifying and reducing the highest sources of risk where the insurer will lose through paying on claims.

Ransomware attacks are as pervasive as ever, with new data demonstrating just how impactful the attacks really are. If you’re one of the lucky few organizations that hasn’t fallen victim to a ransomware attack, consider yourself lucky. According to the 2023 Ransomware Trends Report from backup vendor Veeam, the vast majority of organizations (85%) have experienced a ransomware attack. And while that number is pretty shocking, that’s not the worst of it.