Official: Puerto Rico Govt Loses $2.6M in Phishing Scam
The finance director of the island’s Industrial Development Company, Rubén Rivera, said in a complaint filed to police Wednesday that the agency sent the money to a fraudulent account. Rivera said the government agency transferred the money on Jan. 17 after receiving an email that alleged a change to a banking account tied to remittance…
Coronavirus-Themed Emails Deliver Malware, Phishing, Scams
The new coronavirus outbreak, which started in China, has made a lot of headlines recently and has caused global panic. Over 40,000 infections have been confirmed and the death toll has exceeded 1,000. The virus has been named 2019-nCoV and Covid-19. Given the virus’s impact, it’s not surprising that cybercriminals and fraudsters have been leveraging…
Phishers impersonate WHO, exploit coronavirus-related anxiety
Media outlets are reporting daily on the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan and the emergency repatriation of foreign citizens that found themselves in the thick of it. As cases of the virus infection keep popping up across the world – demonstrating just how small (i.e., well-connected) our planet is – so do fake news and videos…
Wuhan coronavirus exploited to deliver malware, phishing, hoaxes
The Wuhan coronavirus continues to spread and create anxiety across the globe, allowing malicious individuals and groups to exploit the situation to spread fake news, malware and phishing emails. Malicious coronavirus-themed campaings IBM X-Force says that Japanese users have been receiving fake notifications about the coronavirus spreading in several prefectures, purportedly sent by a disability…
Over half of organizations were successfully phished in 2019
Nearly 90 percent of global organizations were targeted with BEC and spear phishing attacks in 2019, reflecting cybercriminals’ continued focus on compromising individual end users, a Proofpoint survey reveals. Seventy-eight percent also reported that security awareness training activities resulted in measurable reductions in phishing susceptibility. The report examines global data from nearly 50 million simulated…
To Avoid Disruption, Ransomware Victims Continue to Pay Up
Ransomware attacks on organizations are likely to continue unabated in the near term if the results of a new survey by Proofpoint are any indication. The security vendor recently polled 600 IT security professionals from around the world on trends related to phishing and other email-borne threats. The results showed that 33% — or nearly…
Five cyber risks that will define 2020
2019 was a bad year for data security. By virtually every metric, it was the worst ever. According to the Ponemon Institute’s 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach reached $3.92 million, the highest amount on record. At the same time, the number of data breaches will reach…
What Is the Biggest Challenge Facing Endpoint Security? Hint: It’s Not Malware
The need to achieve responsible enterprise security has taken center stage in enterprise IT management in recent years, precipitated by a deluge of public data breaches that damaged company reputations. However, lacking information on the most critical modern attack vectors, many organizations continue to rely solely on traditional virus scanning tools as their sole method…
Hackers go phishing for the holidays
It’s that time of year again. Everyone’s busy – at work and at home. That includes cybercriminals, too. In fact, the holiday season is when busy, distracted people tend to be especially vulnerable to phishing attacks. Just one click on a phishing link in a realistic-looking email or package shipment notice from even the savviest…
Warning! Windows 10 Fake Update is Actually Ransomware
Microsoft never sends updates via email. Many folks don’t know that, which is why a new ransomware campaign masquerading as a Windows 10 update is so pernicious. You may have already gotten a fake notice saying “Install Latest Microsoft Update Now!” Or “Critical Microsoft Windows Update!”, with the body of the message asking you to…