A scam operation called “Estate” has attempted to trick nearly a hundred thousand people into handing over multi-factor authentication codes over the past year, according to Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch. The scammers target users of Amazon, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Coinbase, Instagram, Mastercard, PayPal, Venmo, Yahoo and more.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) San Francisco division warns that threat actors are increasingly using AI tools to improve their social engineering attacks. “AI provides augmented and enhanced capabilities to schemes that attackers already use and increases cyber-attack speed, scale, and automation,” the FBI says.

New data shows that despite the massive evolution of the cybercrime economy, threat actors are sticking with the basics in social engineering attacks, with a goal at stealing data. I probably could have called this purely based on all the articles I’ve written (and all the articles I’ve read that never made it here). But when it comes to protecting your organization from social engineering, stick to the basics.

New analysis of Q1’s ransomware attacks uncovers a single group responsible for the majority and discusses what makes them so successful. This sort of analysis helps to establish threat landscape trends and keeps our collective focus on the places where cyber attacks are working.

Attackers are exploiting Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) flaws to bypass security filters, according to a new report from Vipre. This technique allows attackers to send benign links in phishing emails that will redirect users to malicious sites. Vipre also found that attackers are increasingly using links instead of malicious attachments in their phishing emails. “Three years ago, it was a 50/50 split between phishing emails utilizing links versus attachments,” the researchers write.

Trend analysis of ransomware attacks in the first quarter of this year reveals a continual increase in the number of "unknown" initial attack vectors, and I think I might understand why. There are two reports that you should be keeping an eye on—the updated Verizon Data Breach Report and ransomware response vendor Coveware’s Quarterly Ransomware Reports. In their latest report covering Q1 of this year, we see a continuing upward trend in “unknown” as the top initial attack vector.

Just when you think bad actors cannot sink any lower, they find a way to. In a recent chilling evolution of ransomware tactics, attackers are now also targeting the families of corporate executives to force compliance and payment. Mandiant's Chief Technology Officer, Charles Carmakal, highlighted this disturbing trend at RSA last week: criminals engaging in SIM swapping attacks against executives' children.

The Met Gala, fashion's biggest night, was not just the A-list attendees who stole the spotlight—digital imposters in the form of AI-generated superstars sent social media into a frenzy. As the actual stars showcased their designer ensembles at the gala, X and other platforms were overrun with images of celebrities who were shown to be there, but they actually didn't attend. This new phenomenon has given rise to a online spectacle that is challenging the realms of reality and fantasy.

One of the largest phishing-as-a-service platforms, LabHost, was severely disrupted by law enforcement in 19 countries during a year-long operation that resulted in 37 arrests. According to a recent Europol announcement, the folks behind the LabHost Phishing as a Service (PhaaS) platform were arrested last month. In a coordinated search over three days, 37 suspects were apprehended, disrupting the well-known service.

Boeing recently confirmed that in October 2023, it fell victim to an attack by the LockBit ransomware gang, which disrupted some of its parts and distribution operations. The attackers demanded a whopping $200 million not to release the data they had exfiltrated. On Wednesday, Boeing admitted it was the company described as the "multinational aeronautical and defense corporation headquartered in Virginia" in a recently unsealed U.S. Department of Justice indictment.