Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Employees often need to access various online services for work and personal purposes. Whether signing up for industry newsletters, registering for webinars, or using online tools, a corporate email address is a convenient way to manage professional communication. However, this seemingly harmless habit can expose employees and their organizations to significant risks.

Trend Micro warns that the Russian state-sponsored threat actor Earth Koshchei (also known as “APT29” or “Cozy Bear”) is using spear phishing emails to trick victims into connecting to rogue Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) relays. “Earth Koshchei’s rogue RDP campaign reached its peak on October 22, when spear-phishing emails were sent to governments and armed forces, think tanks, academic researchers, and Ukrainian targets,” Trend Micro explains.

Welcome to the most prestigious event in the world of cyber trickery: the annual Avast Phishing Awards! Join us as we unveil the most noteworthy, side-eye-inducing, and downright dubious email headlines that made this such a year to remember.

The holidays are a hectic time. It’s often the busiest sales period of the year, generating the lion’s share of revenue for many organizations. At the same time, employees are wrapping up their big projects before the office closes for the winter break. Meanwhile, everyone’s trying to work around increasingly packed schedules while caring for their personal and family needs.

A threat actor is abusing HubSpot’s Free Form Builder service to craft credential-harvesting phishing pages, according to Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42. The campaign has targeted at least 20,000 users at European companies in the automotive, chemical, and industrial compound manufacturing sectors. The attacks are designed to steal credentials in order to compromise victims’ Microsoft Azure cloud services.

ESET has published its threat report for the second half of 2024, outlining a new social engineering tactic targeting mobile banking users. Threat actors are using Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and WebAPKs to bypass mobile security measures, since these files don’t require users to grant permissions to install apps from unknown sources. “The initial phishing messages were delivered through various methods, including SMS, automated voice calls, and social media malvertising,” ESET says.

Phishing remains one of the most dangerous and persistent cyber threats for individuals and organizations. Modern attacks use a growing arsenal of deceptive techniques that bypass traditional secure email gateways (SEGs) and email authentication measures, targeting organizations, employees, and vendors.

Fact: An organization of any size has employees that receive email. Fact: Threat actors, with the help of apps like ChatGPT, are becoming more efficient at creating compelling phishing emails. Fact: The law of averages mandates an attack will succeed when a staffer is fooled and opens a malicious email or clicks on the wrong link. Fact: A robust email security strategy, which includes a Secure Email Gateway, is a must to protect against email-borne attacks.

In cybersecurity, email has always been a critical concern. However, we feel the new 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Email Security Platforms has signaled a shift in how we approach email protection. We believe this new Magic Quadrant encompasses a broader spectrum of email security providers to reflect the evolving threat landscape and the need for more integrated solutions.