Security News
Between October and January the average number of COVID-19 vaccine-related spear-phishing attacks grew 26 percent, said Barracuda Networks researchers. The types of cybercriminal activity varies, from sending malicious emails that purport to be from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to posting advertisements on underground forums touting vaccine doses for sale.
A phishing campaign targeting users of Outlook Web Access and Office 365 services collected thousands of credentials relying on trusted domains such as SendGrid. Using Zoom invites as a lure and an extensive list of email addresses, the operators of the phishing campaign delivered messages from hacked accounts on the SendGrid cloud-based email delivery platform.
Cybercriminals have changed tactics since COVID-19, with surgically precise social engineering attacks targeting business apps replacing batch-and-blast phishing. A survey of IT professionals and leaders from email security firm GreatHorn finds big changes afoot in the world of email-targeting cyberattacks: The daily quantity of attacks has decreased, but those that remain are more precise and easier to miss.
The developer of the 16Shop phishing platform has added a new component that targets users of the popular Cash App mobile payment service. 16Shop is a complex phishing kit from a developer known as DevilScream, who set up a protection mechanism against unlicensed use and research activity.
An AOL mail phishing campaign is underway to steal users' login name and password by warning recipients that their account is about to be closed. While most people are using Gmail, Outlook, or other modern free mail services, many older people continue to use AOL simply because they are used to the service and find it too complicated to switch to a new email service.
In the past, most BEC emails have been written in English - meaning that defense systems can be tuned to recognise flag words and phrases written in this internationally recognized language. We have observed a rise in the number of BEC emails in recent months.
According to a Tuesday report by Cofense, which analyzed millions of emails related to various attacks, 57 percent were phishing emails aiming to steal victim usernames and passwords. The remainder of malicious emails were utilized in business email compromise attacks or for malware delivery.
Researchers are warning of recent phishing attacks targeting at least 10,000 Microsoft email users, pretending to be from popular mail couriers - including FedEx and DHL Express. Both scams have targeted Microsoft email users and aim to swipe their work email account credentials.
Researchers from GreatHorn report they have observed a nearly 6,000-percent jump in attacks using "Malformed URL prefixes" to evade protections and deliver phishing emails that look legit. Typosquatting is a common phishing email tactic where everyday business names are mispelled, like "Amozon.com" - to try and trick unobservant users into clicking.
Email security company GreatHorn is warning of a new form of phishing attack that makes malicious messages more likely to get through filters and harder for the average person to detect by sight. Email scanning programs, GreatHorn said in a blog post, aren't configured to detect these kinds of attacks because they don't fit known bad criteria.