Security News > 2022 > June > Proofpoint dispels commonly held threat actor assumptions in new report
"Despite defenders' best efforts, cybercriminals continue to defraud, extort, and ransom companies for billions of dollars annually," said Sherrod DeGrippo, vice president of threat research and detection at Proofpoint.
Proofpoint entered into the report with a number of assumptions in place, detailing what methods threat actors would go to to carry out an attack, as well as the methods employed to help carry out such attacks.
Proofpoint also found that threat actors attempting to start a conversation were more likely to receive funds from a victim due to the familiarity the target now believes they have with the criminal.
As with spoofing legitimate sources, a commonly held belief is that email-based threats exist only on laptops or PC's, but this is also a falsity.
Last year, Proofpoint found that threat actors were employing call-center based email attacks.
The final assumption that was dispelled as part of the report was that threat actors would not take advantage of timely social issues to elicit a response from their victims.