Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Increasing phishing attacks are a constant threat to organizations, making it crucial for users to report suspicious emails. This practice not only helps in identifying and mitigating potential threats, but also plays a significant role in educating and creating awareness among employees. The importance of reporting suspected phishing emails cannot be overstated, as it acts as a last line of defense against cyber threats.

LNK (shortcut) files are a common starting point for many phishing campaigns. Threat actors abuse the unique properties of LNK files to deceive users and evade detection and prevention countermeasures, making them potent tools for compromising systems and networks. In this blog, we'll provide an in-depth analysis of recent LNK phishing campaigns, examining the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) employed by threat actors.

In 2023, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 21,489 BEC complaints with adjusted losses over $2.9 billion USD, according to their 2023 Internet Crime Report. By way of comparison, ransomware, the cyber attack that grabs all the headlines and keeps IT and security teams up at night, accounted for only 2,825 complaints, with adjusted losses of less than $60 million USD.

Remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) culture have made mobile devices a permanent part of our work lives. In today’s professional world, mobile devices can do basically everything a laptop or desktop can do — including get phished. Mobile devices are increasingly the starting point of the modern kill chain, and mobile phishing plays an important role in the process. Understanding how threat actors attack mobile devices is the first step to keeping data and devices secure. ‍

A phishing campaign is impersonating recruiting firms to target job seekers with a new strain of malware, according to researchers at Elastic Security. “Since late April 2024, our team has observed new phishing campaigns leveraging lures tied to recruiting firms,” the researchers write.

Microsoft 365 has experienced several notable outages recently. In January 2023, a major outage lasted over five hours, affecting various services, including Exchange Online. This incident was attributed to a network configuration issue during a planned update (Practical 365). Another significant outage occurred in June 2023, impacting services like Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive for several hours due to a network issue (WinBuzzer).

My hacker story occurred not too long ago at the Hong Kong office of an undisclosed multinational corporation. The hackers pulled off a first-of-its-kind scam that leveraged a phishing email as the initial attack vector followed by a deepfake video call. In this instance, there was enough information to establish a perceived authority for a finance worker who transferred a total of HK$200 million in 15 transactions to five different Hong Kong bank accounts until the scam was detected.