How was North Korea able to pull off a successful cyberattack against Sony?  What was the secret exploited by the North Koreans? Well, the New York Times is reporting that it was no secret at all. It was good old fashioned spearphishing which deceived a Sony employee. That deception compromised system admin credentials. With the system admin credentials in hand, the North Koreans: spent more than two months, from mid-September to mid-November, mapping Sony’s computer systems, identifying critical files and planning how to destroy computers and servers. There are two secrets. The first secret is that the US Government was [...]

Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Canada focusing on advanced research and development at the intersection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), human rights, and global security, is reporting on a targeted attack using spearphishing that appears to be the work of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This attack was targeted at Raqqah is being Slaughtered Silently (RSS), a Syrian group of citizen journalists which focuses its advocacy on documenting human rights abuses by ISIS elements occupying the city of Ar-Raqah. The attack was the classic spearphishing cyberattack - an unsolicited e-mail containing a [...]

ICANN is responsible for the coordination of maintenance and methodology of the internet domain names. On December 16, 2104, ICANN announced: ICANN is investigating a recent intrusion into our systems. We believe a "spear phishing" attack was initiated in late November 2014. It involved email messages that were crafted to appear to come from our own domain being sent to members of our staff. The attack resulted in the compromise of the email credentials of several ICANN staff members.   We are reminded yet again that deceiving users with spearphishing is an excellent means to infiltrate systems. ICANN couldn't stop phishing.  Can you? [...]

The Canadian National Research Council has been compromised in a cyberattack. The Canadian National Research Council (NRC) is the Government of Canada's premier research and technology organization. The attack forced the shut down of NRC's computer network in July.  The attackers sought to steal valuable trade secrets and intellectual property.  The attack is being blamed on China. CBC News describes the details of the attack: The cyber response centre's report details the "exploitation cycle" of the attack, saying it began with the collection of valid email addresses for research council employees. Messages containing malicious links were then sent to the [...]

Cylance has just released its "Operation Cleaver" report. After two years of investigation, Cylance concludes: Since at least 2012, Iranian actors have directly attacked, established persistence in, and extracted highly sensitive materials from the networks of government agencies and major critical infrastructure companies in the following countries: Canada, China, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Kuwait, Mexico, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Cylance provides this map of the victims: Source: Cylance How did the attackers gain access to the targeted systems?  Cylance reports that the attackers used SQL injection and Spearphishing.  Spearphishing [...]

We just posted a new YouTube video entitled "Deception." See all of our videos on our Film Festival page.

We have posted a webinar by infosecurity magazine on our Film Festival page.  Look near the bottom of the page. The security experts discuss how easy it is to deceive people.  They make the point that given a choice between infiltration by technical means  and attacking people, attacking people with social engineering is the attack of choice because it is fast, easy and has a high probability of success. The attackers are targeting users to infiltrate systems. Users need tools that assist them in identifying cleverly constructed spearphishing emails. That is the function of SP Guard.

It is being widely reported in the press that the US State Department has been compromised in a cyberattack.   US State Department USA Today  reports that although no classified information was  compromised, the attack has forced the State Department to take down its unclassified email system. USA Today reports: To learn that additional government agencies beyond the White House were attacked, "is not at all surprising," said Rick Holland, a principal analyst and cybersecurity expert at Forrester Research. "What is surprising is that we are two weeks into it and it's just now coming out. Likely, the attacker is [...]