Know your enemy: Defining the new taxonomy of malicious emails

Just as it is the default tool for most businesses, email’s capacity for rapid, mass communication has made it a favourite instrument of criminals. As a result, malicious emails have become a common occurrence in most consumer and business inboxes. Although chances are that most people will correctly identify the most common malicious emails as…

Russian hackers use OAuth, fake Google apps to phish users

The Russian hacking group blamed for targeting U.S. and European elections has been breaking into email accounts, not only by tricking victims into giving up passwords, but by stealing access tokens too. It’s sneaky hack that’s particularly worrisome, because it can circumvent Google’s 2-step verification, according to security firm Trend Micro. The group, known as…

Phishing attacks responsible for three-quarters of all malware

With phishing now widely used as a mechanism for distributing ransomware, a new NTT Security reveals that 77% of all detected ransomware globally was in four main sectors – business & professional services (28%), government (19%), health care (15%) and retail (15%). While technical attacks on the newest vulnerabilities tend to dominate the media, many…

Safe online shopping and banking on your Mac

Macs are commonly believed to be safe from malware, but — setting aside the fact that they aren’t — what about other risks? When it comes to shopping online, phishing is the main problem. Phishing websites look just like real ones, but instead of selling goods or services, they steal your bank or credit card…

Fake LinkedIn emails phishing job seekers

The scammers are trying to impersonate the popular employment-oriented social networking service, but careful users will immediately spot many things that point to the email being fake: The email sender address that has nothing to do with LinkedIn The lack of certain design elements and the “unsubscribe” footer usually contained in LinkedIn emails The email…

Tax season security tips: Protect yourself from cybercrime

Between December 2016 and February 2017, IBM X-Force researchers saw a 6,000 percent increase in tax-related spam emails. The researchers see this increase and other factors as evidence that cybercriminals are not slowing down their attacks in the days leading up to Tax Day 2017. IBM’s analysis found that historically 54 million of Americans who…

SMS phishing for the masses

Phishing remains one of the top threats that affects both consumers and businesses thanks to ever evolving tricks. While ‘classic’ phishing emails remain a problem, they can somewhat be thwarted via spam filters, whereas SMS phishing scams are much more difficult to protect against. Case in point, here’s a fraudulent text message purporting to be from RBC, a…