Phishing – Page 6

Spearphishing? Deciding Isn’t Easy

Part of the fallout from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data breach is the need to provide identify protection services to the millions of compromised government employees. In its efforts to provide these services to compromised federal workers, the OPM contracted with a private company. That contractor, CSID, sent an email with a link to enroll in identity protection services. ArmyTimes reports that acting upon warnings from the Army Threat Integration Center, Fort Meade's Cyber Security Network Defense Team identified a message from CSID as a spearphishing attempt. The Fort Meade Cyber Security Network Defense Team warned Army personnel to "close the message immediately and [...]

rpziconix2018-04-05T13:14:43-04:00July 29th, 2015|Cybersecurity - General, Phishing, spear phishing|

How Do Hackers Infiltrate Systems?

The accounts of tens of millions of Anthem members are stolen. $1 billion are stolen from banks. Sony Pictures is compromised. The Chinese steal US military aircraft plans. The President of the United States decries the losses and appoints someone to fix the problem. Yet, what is the problem? Professor Arun Vishwanath, writing in The Conversation tells us that the system resource being exploited over and over and over again isn't some router or disk drive or program -- it is you, the person operating the machine. It's You! In Before decrying the latest cyberbreach, consider your own cyberhygiene, [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:13-05:00February 26th, 2015|Consumers and Email, Cybersecurity - General, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Microsoft VLSC Phishing Attack

SpiceWorks is reporting a phishing attack targeting Microsoft customers. In this attack, the bad guy is sending an email that appears to be a routine license renewal notice. But this is anything but routine. The links are designed to steal your log-in credentials for your Microsoft account. To make the scam less obvious, some of the links go to real FAQs.

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:13-05:00January 16th, 2015|Cybersecurity - General, Phishing|

Google Discovers — People

Google, in association with the University of California, San Diego, has released research which analyses spearphishing attacks against gmail accounts from 2011-2014. The researchers found that the success of a spearphishing attacks ranged from a low of 3% to a high of 45%. The researchers determined that the greater the effort put into the targeting of the message, the higher the probability of a successful attack. The researchers made this observation regarding financial scam attacks: Thus, despite the appearance of simplicity, in reality, the scam emails are well-formed and thought-out in a way to maximize efficiency by preying on known human physiological [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:14-05:00November 14th, 2014|Consumers and Email, Cybersecurity - General, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Iconix YouTube Channel – New Video

We have posted a new video about our Truemark service for consumers on our YouTube Channel. You can also view our videos on our Film Festival Page.

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:14-05:00November 6th, 2014|Consumers and Email, Cybersecurity - General, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM)

Today is the last day of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). We thought that the October 29, 2014, alert from ICS-CERT about the vulnerabilities of the US infrastructure highlighted both the complexity and simplicity of the problem. In Alert ICS-ALERT-14-281-01A ICS-CERT warns: ICS-CERT has identified a sophisticated malware campaign that has compromised numerous industrial control systems (ICSs) environments using a variant of the BlackEnergy malware. Analysis indicates that this campaign has been ongoing since at least 2011. Multiple companies working with ICS-CERT have identified the malware on Internet-connected human-machine interfaces (HMIs). How is this sophisticated malware introduced into industrial control systems? It [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:14-05:00October 31st, 2014|Cybersecurity - General, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

JPMorgan Chase Braces for Spearphishing Attacks

Following the compromise of contact information such as names and email addresses for 76 million individual customers and 7 million small businesses, JPMorgan Chase is preparing for spearphishing attacks against its customers. . Followers of Iconix know what spearphishing is -- the bad guy sends an email that pretends to be from a trusted sender. The recipient clicks a link or opens an attachment and bad things happen. When that attack targets bank customers, the obvious bad thing is a compromise that will steal the victim's money from the compromised bank. Fox News reports a list of other bad things the bad [...]

rpziconix2018-04-05T12:54:01-04:00October 10th, 2014|Consumers and Email, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing|

Windows Security Twisted to Block Security Tools

TrendMicro is reporting that bad guys in Japan are abusing Microsoft's security functionality, Software Restriction Policies, to disable security tools. The malware, termed BKDR_VAWTRAK, searches for commonly used security applications. If a security application is detected, the malware modifies the registry keys such that Software Restriction Policies will run the security software in a restricted state -- rendering it useless. The malware is distributed using malicious emails and compromised websites. This malware is being used to facilitate unauthorized banking transactions in Japan. Quoting TrendMicro, [The Japanese] National Police Agency mentioned that the current estimated total cost of unauthorized transactions suffered by [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:15-05:00June 26th, 2014|Consumers and Email, Cybersecurity - General, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Somebody Hacked My Car!

Cyber attackers covet credentials -- with user credentials the hacker becomes the user. What happens when your car is a computer? The Tesla S is a mobile computer. Owners are provided with an app that lets them locate their car and open it. Nitesh Dhanjani, a corporate security consultant, recently discovered that the tried and true methods of hacking which steal credentials for computers (think -- phishing) work to steal credentials for cars. He reported his findings at a recent Black Hat conference in Singapore: If a password is stolen or cracked, someone could locate and gain access [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:15-05:00April 4th, 2014|Cybersecurity - General, Phishing|

Trick No Treat – Spearphishing

Today is Halloween. On this day kids and adults alike masquerade and engage in merriment. For children coming to your door, the greeting is "Trick Or Treat." There is another kind of masquerade that is taking place every day in cyberspace -- spearphishing. Instead of obscuring their identity for fun and games, spearphishers masquerade as trusted email senders. When you open the email, there is no treat, only an evil trick. For example, Quartz has confirmed that the Syrian Electronic Army used spearphishing to infiltrate the Obama inner circle and compromise the President's twitter feed. Spearphishers deceive people into making bad [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:18-05:00October 31st, 2013|Phishing, SP Guard|