Cyber-attacks making headlines these days have resulted in embarrassing tweets, website defacement, and even theft of intellectual property. What’s the common thread in many of these events? Often, the inbox of an innocent employee. Whether it’s a low-tech phishing attack or embedded links leading to advanced malware, email still remains the most vulnerable and direct Read more…
Tags: Email & Web Security, Email Protection, hack, malware, phishing, security breach, Security-as-a-Service, social engineering
Smart people are scammed every day because they think it can’t happen to them or they just aren’t aware of the scams. And the scammers have gotten very good at disguising their scams, so it’s often hard to recognize them. Scamming generally involves a form of social engineering. Social engineering is the act of manipulating Read more…
Tags: identity theft, Internet scams, internet security, scams, social engineering
As we look back on 2012, it’s impossible not to recall the many high-profile breaches and cybersecurity incidents that took place this year. 2012 has certainly been a rocky one for online safety and consumer security as a whole, with numerous high-traffic websites breached and more malware and mobile threats than ever before. While it’s Read more…
Tags: 2012, DDoS, mobile malware, security breaches, social engineering
“Social engineering works. It seems to tap into psychological factors that are part of the human nature.”1 We’ve all heard the story. A friend of a friend wires money to a family member stranded in a foreign country, desperate for cash to get back home. An article about a celebrity claimed to be deceased floods Read more…
Don’t click on the link! Simple? That’s our security awareness done, and now we can focus on the implementation of technology controls. Well not quite. This approach to user awareness formed the basis of a recent keynote presentation I did at the ITSecurity Summit in Johannesburg. In the presentation I used a well known case Read more…
Tags: phishing, social engineering
McAfee Labs Messaging Security recently observed a new malicious spam campaign pushing password-stealing Trojans associated with the Zeus/Zbot family. This campaign leverages several notable social engineering techniques. For admins and netizens familiar with contemporary email-borne threats, a message purporting an undeliverable DHL, FedEx, or USPS package triggers an immediate red flag. Though still prevalent, those Read more…
Tags: king county, password stealer, puget sound, social engineering, spam, Zbot, zeus
Information technologies have evolved to a level at which the developers, programmers, and security specialists all know what they’re doing, and are able to produce products and services that work and are reasonably secure. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. Despite the amount of criminal hacking that goes on, users who effectively implement the Read more…
Tags: data loss, Hackers, phishing, social engineering
Posts tagged under social engineering