Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

It's time for you and your colleagues to become more skeptical about what you read. That's a takeaway from a series of experiments undertaken using GPT-3 AI text-generating interfaces to create malicious messages designed to spear-phish, scam, harrass, and spread fake news. Experts at WithSecure have described their investigations into just how easy it is to automate the creation of credible yet malicious content at incredible speed.

Throughout 2022, threat actors have been masquerading as the postal service Singapore Post (SingPost) and one of Singapore’s leading telecommunications companies Singtel. Victims are being targeted by phishing emails that appear to be from Singapore Post or Singtel. In these emails, users were sent messages informing them of fake billing issues or outstanding payments with links to fraudulent websites that asked for their personal information.

There’s usually a surge in online activities during festive periods. People place gift orders and send funds to loved ones, and organizations roll out offers that reflect the spirit of the festivity. Threat actors will usually take advantage of this activity to sneak past your defenses. By convincingly impersonating any of these legitimate offers, they can gain access to an organization's network, and wreak havoc.

Cybercriminals who use Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are switching up their tactics, with some groups now targeting actual merchandise instead of money in their phishing attacks. Trustwave’s email security solution MailMarshal is aware of and investigating this new methodology. MailMarshal is capable of defending an organization against BEC attacks. This Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations (FDA OCI), and the U.S.

Meta has two of the largest social media platforms today, Facebook and Instagram. These platforms became the modern gateway for people not just to socialize and eavesdrop on the lives of famous personalities, but more importantly, to stay connected with their friends and loved ones. The sites also became effective channels for organizations to advertise and disseminate information.

A phishing attack is a fraudulent email pretending to be from a safe, familiar, or reliable source intended to induce the email recipient to reveal personal information such as financial information, personally identifiable information (PII), Passwords, or credit and bank account numbers to the writer.

Recently, we’ve noticed an increase in user reports of SMS-based Business Email Compromise (BEC) messages. This seems to be part of a wider trend as phishing scams via text messages surge. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) observed an increase in unsolicited text messages, with 2022 practically tripling the number of phishing texts reported to the FCC in 2019. Phishing scams are prevalent in the SMS threat landscape, and now, BEC attacks are also going mobile.

Phishing prevention can be difficult since it is constantly morphing and so common. A multi-pronged approach usually works best for addressing this threat.

Email is embedded into the everyday lives of U.S. adults. For starters, the average person receives over 100 emails a day. To sort through all of that, workers spend an average of five hours a day checking their email. With this communication tool demanding so much of our attention, it’s no wonder cybercriminals use it as a preferred method for carrying out major attacks.