Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

A record 2,322 scams in Japan to steal internet banking IDs and passwords have resulted in unauthorized money transfers totaling a record of around 3 billion yen ($21 million) in the first half of this year, a report by the National Police Agency showed Tuesday. The number of cases mainly involving phishing this year has already surpassed the annual total of any previous year, with the financial loss approaching the record high of 3.07 billion yen set in 2015, according to the agency.

Scammers are taking advantage of Twitter’s rebranding to “X,” according to Stephanie Adlam at Gridinsoft. A phishing campaign is targeting Twitter Blue users by telling them they need to transfer their subscription to X.

As the retirement countdown for the current version of PCI is now less than six months, a new standard for password length, complexity, and change frequency may create some risk. Valid credentials have become a very hot item, as threat actors realize the low risk and high value of simply becoming an Initial Access Broker (rather than performing an entire cyber attack themselves).

With its wide use and trusted state among Wordpress developers and website admins, a new campaign impersonating the website security brand could put hundreds of millions of websites at risk. Today, it's estimated there are over 810 million websites that run on Wordpress. One of Wordpress’ most used plugins is Wordfence – a security platform made specifically for the website platform.

In today's world, cybercriminals are learning to harness the power of AI. Cybersecurity professionals must be prepared for the current threats of zero days, insider threats, and supply chain, but now add in Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Generative AI. AI can revolutionize industries, but cybersecurity leaders and practitioners should be mindful of its capabilities and ensure it is used effectively.

Most organizations are still using weak forms of multi-factor authentication (MFA), a survey by Nok Nok has found. These forms of MFA can be bypassed if an employee falls for a social engineering attack. “72% of organizations still use phishable MFA factors for their customer-facing applications,” the researchers write. “The cost and risk of lost or stolen data, business, and funds from compromised accounts is motivating organizations to make MFA mandatory for their customers.

As a security awareness practitioner, keeping your pulse on industry - and geographical - benchmarking data and best practices is always a good way to measure your organization’s security awareness success. That’s why KnowBe4 has launched its Phishing Benchmarking Analysis Center. It’s intended as a fun, interactive digital hub that allows you to slice and dice security awareness benchmarking data from across various industries and geographical regions.

Seeking very large paydays, Vendor Email Compromise (VEC) threat actors are finding out what works and repurposing their content and processes to increase chances of seeing a massive payout. VEC is a form of Business Email Compromise (BEC) where an email account isn’t just impersonated (e.g., using someone’s name, a lookalike domain, etc.) but actually compromising credentials and taking over an account of someone within an organization.

A recap of Q2 from Cisco Talos’ incident response services provides insight into exactly what kinds of attacks are being seen in the field, and what kinds of attacks you need to be protecting against. While I love covering industry reports here, I also love to see practical experiences from the field summarized into trends. And that’s exactly what we find with Cisco Talos Incident Response’s Incident Response trends Q2 2023 recap.

Many of us have received a phone call or other notification from a credit card company telling us that they’ve detected suspicious activity on our card. Was it us? Did we just spend $500 at that big box store up the road? No? Thank you; there’ll be no charge. Or, if that was you, then you need take no further action.