Security News

CISOs at Stanford University, the University of Chicago Medicine, and The Ohio State University list phishing as the top security threat to students, professors, and researchers. The group also agreed zero trust is the best security approach but a hard sell in an academic setting.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has published an alert to provide information on attacks delivering the KONNI remote access Trojan. Active since at least 2014 but remaining unnoticed for over three years, KONNI has been used in highly targeted attacks only, including ones aimed at the United Nations, UNICEF, and entities linked to North Korea.

Authorities in Maryland have issued an advisory about an apparent email phishing scam targeting firearms dealers in the state. Maryland State Police said it was issued after the Maryland State Police Licensing Division was notified Tuesday about emails received by at least two firearms dealers.

The breach compromised 28,000 records, exposing such data as names, phone numbers, physical addresses, and email addresses. On Aug. 6, security training firm SANS Institute discovered a data breach of approximately 28,000 records as the result of one successful phishing attack against a single employee.

We've seen phishing emails and malicious content centered around the initial spread of the virus, the resulting lockdown, the transition to remote working, the stimulus payments, and the return-to-work effort. One especially sensitive area found in many phishing emails has been the promise of a coronavirus vaccine.

The US Small Business Administration has been offering loans to businesses and other groups affected by the pandemic and lockdown, turning it into a target ripe for impersonation in phishing attacks. A report published Monday by security firm Malwarebytes tracks some of the different phishing campaigns that have sought to exploit the SBA. SEE: Coronavirus: Critical IT policies and tools every business needs.

Phishing attacks typically try to lure in victims by impersonating well-known companies, brands, and products. Released on Tuesday, Check Point's "Brand Phishing Report for Q2 2020" found that Google and Amazon were the most impersonated brands last quarter, each accounting for 13% of the brand phishing campaigns analyzed.

Google and Amazon overtook Apple in the second quarter of 2020 as the brand most spoofed by attackers to lure people into falling for phishing attacks. While the number of so-called brand-phishing attacks remained stable from the first quarter of 2020 to the second, there was a major shift in position for the companies that threat actors think people are most likely to trust - or whose pages they will most likely click on, according to Check Point Research's Brand Phishing Report for Q2. Brand phishing is a type of attack in which a threat actor imitates an official website of a known brand by using a similar domain or URL in an attack, as well as in some cases a copycat web page similar or identical to the actual company's original website in look and feel.

Twitter has confirmed that the breach of several high-profile accounts that occurred on July 15 was caused by a phone spear phishing attack that targeted a small number of employees. Using the credentials of the affected employees, the attackers managed to compromise 130 different Twitter accounts, including those of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama, according to Twitter.

Twitter on Thursday revealed that several employees were targeted with phone spear-phishing in a social engineering attack leading to the recent security incident. A total of 130 accounts were targeted in the incident, with hackers abusing internal Twitter systems and tools to reset the passwords for 45 of them.