Phishing – Page 7

CryptoLocker — Ransomware via Email

Computerworld is reporting on a new piece of ransomware called CryptoLocker. Delivered as an email attachment claiming to be from Xerox, UPS, FedEx, or other trusted sender, CryptoLocker encrypts your files. The bad guys give you a limited period of time to pay the ransom. Once the payment has been made, the decryption usually begins. There is typically a four-day time limit on the payment option; the malware's author claims the private key required to decrypt files will be deleted if the ransom is not received in time. If the private key is deleted, your files will essentially never [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:18-05:00October 25th, 2013|Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Your Bleeped Up Brain

The cable TV channel H2 is running a mini-series on the human mind - Your Bleeped Up Brain. The series is truly fascinating. While we think our heads contain a highly precise computer, it turns out that the ball of matter inside our heads is good at navigating life, but not very good at discerning fine details out of a complex environment. For those us of in the cybersecurity world, the last episode - Deception - is particularly interesting. In Deception, the show presents several examples of how the brain takes incomplete or inaccurate information and completes the story to [...]

rpziconix2018-04-05T13:20:49-04:00August 6th, 2013|Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Spearphishing Tricks — Everyone

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that new research from the State University of North Carolina shows that people are easily deceived by targeted emails. The researchers found that although people were aware of how spearphishing worked and confident in their abilities to avoid deception, people were, nevertheless, deceived. Before taking the test, 89% of the subjects said they were confident that they could spot spearphishing emails. When put to the test, just 4 of the 53 subjects were able to correctly spot the spearphishing messages. More than half of the test subjects missed more than half of the fake [...]

rpziconix2017-01-07T17:35:19-05:00August 2nd, 2013|Consumers and Email, Email Marketing, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

China Read McCain’s Mail – Before He Sent It

NBC News is reporting that the 2008 Presidential Campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain were spied upon by the Chinese. Click To Watch NBC News Report NBC is reporting that the espionage conducted against the campaigns of the two candidates was far more extensive than was disclosed to the public at the time. In one incident that caused concern among U.S. intelligence officials, the Chinese hackers appeared to have gotten access to private correspondence between McCain, then the GOP presidential candidate, and Ma Ying-jeou, the newly elected president of Taiwan. On July 25, 2008, McCain had signed [...]

iconixtruemark2017-01-07T17:35:19-05:00June 13th, 2013|Phishing, SP Guard|

Back From Vacation, China Renews Simple, But Effective, Cyberattacks

The New York Times is reporting that Unit 61398, the Chinese cyber-espionage unit that has stolen vast amounts of data from western governments and industry, has returned to its old tricks. Following the release of the Mandiant report in February 2103, the unit disappeared from the internet. However, they have now returned to the web, operating at 60% to 70% of the level there at which they were working before Mandiant exposed them. Quoting Crowdstrike, the NYT reports that it is "business as usual" for the Chinese hackers. Reporting on the same story, Computerworld observes that what the Unit 61398 [...]

iconixtruemark2017-01-07T17:35:19-05:00May 20th, 2013|Phishing, SP Guard|

2013 Security Threats — Websense

Websense has release a comprehensive prediction of the security threats for the coming year. We recommend that anyone interested in the evolving threats and tactics being used to attack systems should read this comprehensive report. Because Iconix is an email security company, we focused on the email predictions. Websense predicts that email will continue to be a favorite means of attack. For consumers, this means more deceptive emails that leverage important recurring events (tax time, elections, etc.), current events and clever trickery to lure people into giving up money or credentials. On the enterprise side, spearphishing will be used to [...]

iconixtruemark2017-01-07T17:35:21-05:00November 16th, 2012|Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Iconix Whitepaper – DMARC

Today Iconix released its whitepaper, “DMARC - Less Than Meets The Eye.” In this whitepaper, Iconix discusses the limitations of DMARC in solving the problem of deceptive emails. In the whitepaper, Iconix focuses on Section 2.2 of the DMARC spec. Iconix discussed how, while the DMARC standard is important, it addresses only one technical avenue exploited by the creators of deceptive email. You can download a copy of the whitepaper here.

iconixtruemark2017-01-07T17:35:24-05:00March 5th, 2012|Phishing|

DMARC Goes Live

Yesterday, dmarc.org released the new DMARC standard for email. Contributors to the DMARC standard include Agari, American Greetings, AOL, Bank of America, Cloudmark, Comcast, Facebook, Fidelity Investments, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PayPal, Return Path, TDP, and Yahoo!. DMARC stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance.” DMARC provides important extensions to the existing email authentication standards by providing automated and standardized methods to process messages that fail email authentication. DMARC explains the significance of this enhancement: A DMARC policy allows a sender to indicate that their emails are protected by SPF and/or DKIM, and tells a receiver what to do if neither [...]

iconixtruemark2017-01-07T17:35:24-05:00January 31st, 2012|Email Authentication, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing|

Zappos Hacked: Customers Beware Phishing Scams

It is being widely reported in the press that an estimated 24 million Zappos user accounts have been compromised. Mashable reports: Robert Siciliano, a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert, says he expects whoever hacked Zappos’s site will now sell the data to people who run phishing scams. “They’ll sell it 10,000 accounts at a time, short money, like $100,” he says. While hackers don’t have complete credit card numbers, Siciliano says there’s enough information for a hacker to approach affected users as either Zappos or the credit card company and then ask them for more data — the classic [...]

iconixtruemark2017-01-07T17:35:24-05:00January 16th, 2012|Consumers and Email, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing|

IRS Email Warns Of Phishing — Is the Warning Phishing?

Today the IRS issued its Tax Tip 2012-08 warning about phishing scams aimed at US taxpayers. Subscribers to IRS information services received an email about the warning. This is a screen shot of the email: Is this a real IRS email? Did you notice these odd things about it? Why would I open such an obviously fake email? Because it isn't fake -- it is real. I know it is real because I use the products of Iconix. This is what my display looks like with SP Guard turned on: The IRS really made spelling errors and the IRS [...]

iconixtruemark2017-01-07T17:35:24-05:00January 12th, 2012|Consumers and Email, Iconix Truemark Service, Phishing, SP Guard, spear phishing|