Keeping you informed. Keeping you aware.
Stay on top of the latest in security including social engineering, ransomware and phishing attacks.
Breathlessly, the Washington Post reports that the Russian Grizzly Steppe malware was found within the system of a Vermont power utility. Nah, they just dodged a bullet. This time someone ...
As one of his last actions in office, President Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats spies in retaliation for Russia interfering with the U.S. election process, after intelligence agencies ...
Talk about adding insult to injury with this new KillDisk version. Here is how social engineering can cost you dearly. The Sandworm cybercrime gang has upped its game. They were initially ...
I have been looking at the coming year and what trends you will probably see actually deployed in your network. These trends are the practical things that will help you to keep your ...
Today, news broke that George Michael was found dead on Sunday at his home in Goring in Oxfordshire, England. He was 53. A police statement said: “Thames Valley Police were called to a ...
In the WSJ of Dec 22, 2016 there is an article that hides the real headline. It talks about the research done by CrowdStrike which shows that the DNC hack was done by a hacker group known ...
Lynda.com, the online learning unit of LinkedIn, has reset passwords for some of its users after it discovered recently that an unauthorized external party had accessed a database ...
CyberheistNews | KnowBe4
Confidential health data or personal information of more than 750,000 people may have been accessed in a cyberattack on Los Angeles County employees in May that led to charges this week ...
This is getting old. It's all over the press... again. Here is a Reuters article where I am quoted, which covers the most recent billion-record Yahoo hack. Some people asked me after our ...
My Interview at CSO About Ransomware-as-a-Service Joan Goodchild, Editor-in-chief at CSO sat me down and asked why Ransomware-as-a-Service has taken off recently: "It’s not just your ...
KnowBe4, the most popular security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, and Barracuda Networks, Inc. (NYSE: CUDA), a leading provider of cloud-enabled security and data ...
A rather mind-blowing 70% of businesses hit by ransomware paid the hackers to regain access to hijacked systems and files, according to a new IBM X-Force Ransomware report. Of the ...
In the September/ October timeframe this year it became clear that Yahoo had lost more than 500 million records which was the biggest hack of the year. Who knew that they would top ...
Sophos reported on one of the more scary ransomware strains I have seen lately. It's called Goldeneye and encrypts the workstation twice: both the files and the Master File Table (MFT). ...
The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data Kevin Mitnick, the world's most famous hacker, and KnowBe4's ...
A couple of weeks ago, a yet unknown attacker hacked the computer systems of the San Francisco’s Municipal railway causing a free ride for all that Saturday. The ransomware hacker was ...
I have been saying this here for the last few years, but if you get it confirmed by a former NSA director, that's nice to hear. The Wall Street Journal just reported that President Barack ...
Larry Abrams just reported: "Yesterday a new in-development ransomware was discovered by MalwareHunterTeam called Popcorn Time that intends to give victim's a very unusual, and criminal, ...
The threat actors behind Locky ransomware have moved on from Norse gods such as Zepto, Odin and Thor and into Egyptian mythology with a new campaign that uses the extension .osiris when ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. Phishing attacks have long been associated with malicious emails that spoof well-known institutions in order to trick users into coughing ...
Two of the big cybersecurity attacks are the CEO Fraud (aka Business Email Compromise) which has caused $3.4 billion in damages as well as the W-2 Scams which social engineer ...
CyberheistNews Vol 6 #49 Welcome To The CyberheistNews 2017 Crystal Ball Issue. In December I spend a few days analyzing our space, and predict the coming year. The Crystal Ball issue is ...
Distributed denial of service attacks, also known as DDoS, are becoming a major threat. They can bring websites and networks down, and generally make a lot of noise demanding attention. ...
Hackers penetrated six Saudi Arabian government agencies including its General Authority of Civil Aviation, and bricked thousands of computers with the well-known Shamoon disk-wiper ...
Reuters reported that hackers stole more than 2 billion rubles ($31 million) from correspondent accounts at the Russian central bank, the bank said on Friday. “We can’t say exactly when, ...
Looking for the top names in cybersecurity? Look no further than the Cybersecurity 500 list of the world’s hottest and most innovative cybersecurity companies: ...
Facebook, Google, and Twitter have recently been facing scrutiny for promoting fake news stories. Depending on your sources and who you believe, fake news played and is still playing a ...
With the biggest cybercriminal hacking holidays of the year upon us, it's time for a reminder of red flags to pay attention to when shopping either online or in brick-and-mortar stores.
RSA did a revealing ransomware risk-reward analysis. See that $6 million number over to the right? Why does cybercrime like ransomware so much? Low Risk, High Payoff From the bad guy's ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher Just two weeks after we reported that the bad guys had effectively converted LinkedIin into a phishing platform, Facebook once again found ...
KnowBe4, the world's most popular platform for new-school security awareness training was named a finalist in the SC Awards 2017 for exemplary professional leadership in cybersecurity. ...
Crysis decryption keys posted The decryption keys of the Crysis ransomware were posted on Pastebin, which allows victims to decrypt their hijacked files without paying. Crysis was ...
We get thousands of real phishing emails in, reported to us by customers using the free KnowBe4 Phish Alert Button. On a daily basis, these reported phishing emails get analyzed by the ...
Michael Kan at CSO reported on a TrustWave blog post with some troublesome news: "Hotel and restaurant chains, beware. A notorious cybercriminal gang is tricking businesses into ...
Do your users know what to do when they receive a suspicious email? Should they call the help desk, or forward it? Should they forward to IT including all headers? Delete and not report ...
Some very good news! Tampa Bay, FL — November 16, 2016 — KnowBe4, provider of the world’s most popular platform for security awareness training and simulated phishing attacks, today ...
Your end-users may have seen this in the news yesterday, or will read about it today. A massive data breach of the adult dating and entertainment company Friend Finder Network has exposed ...
In late October, three of the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) hospitals’ computer systems were attacked by malware that forced the hospital to cancel scheduled surgeries and divert ...
The shoe retailer Foot Locker Inc. has three iPhone apps. But that did not stop an entity calling itself Footlocke Sports Co., Ltd. from offering 16 shoe and clothing apps in the App ...
by Eric Howes (Principal Lab Researcher) & Ryann Falke (Sales Development Representative) Last week we documented several interesting credentials phishes delivered through LinkedIn ...
So, you downloaded KnowBe4's Ransomware Simulator test and your antivirus security software failed one or more of the ransomware scenarios. When this happens we almost always get asked: ...
It's not all doom and gloom!
Graham Cluley was the first to report on a new Locky ransomware phishing attack where the emails claim to be "credit card suspended" and "suspicious money movement" warnings. He said: "In ...
Malwarebytes Researcher Jerome Segura reported on a new Tech Support scam that uses a known HTML5 bug to freeze the system and trick people to call a fake support number. Note, it does ...
During a news conference Wednesday afternoon, city officials revealed that cybercriminals pretending to be a vendor scammed the city's Accounts Receivable Department out of about $3 ...
A new version of the Nymaim malware family targets high-level managers with attached malicious Word documents and drops ransomware and banking trojans. The cyber research team at Verint ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. Several months ago we blogged about a startling discovery by threat researchers at Proofpoint: the bad guys had figured out a way to turn ...
Halloween 2014 15 employees. Scroll down for the later years!
Symantec warns that tech support scams are getting more sophisticated by the month: "These scams remain one of the major and evolving forces in the computer security landscape. Between ...
John Podesta, Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign was a victim of social engineering and rushed advice from his IT helpdesk. It's a comedy of errors. The helpdesk ...
We reviewed thousands of domains that have been through our domain spoof test and analyzed more than 10,000 email servers. We found that 82% of these are misconfigured.
The Wall Street Journal is getting the message. They said : "For companies concerned about the soaring number of ransomware attacks–in which hackers take control of data or systems and ...
It was all over the news. A sustained DDoS attack that caused outages for a large number of Web sites Friday was launched with the help of hacked “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices. Jeff ...
Researchers at RapidityNetworks discovered a new malicious worm using Telnet that infects IoT devices using their insecure default credentials and uses a peer-to-peer network to install ...
Michael Gillespie tweeted: "Whew! ID #Ransomware can now identify 200 ransomware families. :) Sad such a milestone was hit so quickly..." He added a list from the malwarehunterteam site, ...
Motherboard has a great article explaining just how Podesta, Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign got hacked. (Podesta previously served as Chief of Staff to ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. Yesterday one of our customers was hit with a highly targeted phishing attack -- one of the slicker attacks we've seen in a while. Once we ...
I'm noticing a lot of people saying the ransim.exe file is getting blocked by your AV. You have to actually allow the initial processes to run to do the simulation. It is the five test ...
A new ransomware strain written in Python called CryPy was disclosed by Avast malware analyst Jakub Kroustek. It seems that Pyton is getting more popular as a ransomware development ...
The Wall Street Journal reported that Verizon's lawyers are looking at using the "material adverse clause' to renegotiate the terms of the $4.8 billion deal they struck on July. Verizon’s ...
Nearly half of ransomware attacks are aimed at office workers, but almost two-thirds of those polled are unaware of the threat More than 60% of US office workers are unaware of ransomware ...
The divorce between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie has been used by the bad guys for a "celebrity death hoax" which unfortunately is high-grade click bait. It's the most recent one to hit ...
Business Insider started an article with the following: "Imagine you've got a meeting with a client, and shortly before you leave, they send you over a confirmation and a map with ...
CSO had an excellent article that states the case that you need to get rid of old-school awareness training which you do for compliance reasons only. Their photo illustration was funny as ...
There is a new insidious IRS scam that you need to warn your employees, friends and family about, and inform your HR department to start with. Seasoned internet criminals are sending ...
(Tampa Bay, FL) October 9, 2016 --- KnowBe4 is excited to announce we were able to beat our stellar Q2, and maintain our explosive year over year growth, Q3 2016 being 369% over Q3 2015. ...
I have been knee deep into Ransomware since September 2013 when the granddaddy of modern ransomware CryptoLocker made well over 20 million bucks in a few months. But sometimes I learn ...
Eric Chabrow over at the Government Info Security blog found an interesting post by Stuart Coulson, who is a director of a hosting provider in the U.K. Coulson wrote a somewhat longish ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. This Monday morning many of our customers came in to work to find a rather rude surprise lurking in their inboxes: a massive Cerber ...
We are stoked to announce the new integration with Active Directory! The Active Directory Integration (ADI) helps you easily upload user data and eliminate manual updates by automatically ...
Great joint survey by CSO, CIO and ComputerWorld by Amy Bennett which is excelllent ammo to add to a budget request that needs to be approved by a C-level exec. Here's why: "If you sense ...
We predicted that this would happen on September 23rd when the news broke that Yahoo lost "at least" 500 Million credentials. Just for a change I'm quoting myself here: :-D "Right, that ...
Here is a ransomware horror story for you... An obscure 2-year old ransomware strain called Virlock has a nasty feature: it is capable of stealthily spreading itself via cloud storage and ...
Eastern European organized crime, not state-sponsored hackers, were behind the record breaking 2014 Yahoo data breach that exposed information about hundreds of millions of Yahoo user ...
When we talk with folks outside the security industry about what we see from the bad guys on a daily basis, we often get the response, "Wow! That's really sneaky." And it's true. The bad ...
Of course everyone knows that hacking into a computer is a federal crime, and infecting a system with ransomware already falls into that bucket. However, California’s SB-1137, signed into ...
Police have arrested a 147 million international fraud and money laundering ring, and jailed nine fraudsters jailed for over 27 years The gang targeted thousands of Lloyds and RBS ...
In Short: The Necurs botnet is one of the world's largest botnets with more than 6 million zombie machines tied into it. It's run by Russian organized cybercrime and responsible for ...
An employee sent this recent horror story to me (thanks Rachel). Remember there are three ways of learning. :-D Read it in a book, blog (or training session) understand it and apply it ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. Over the past few months we've discussed the rising use of price discrimination among purveyors of ransomware to maximize their returns on ...
You asked and we listened! We’ve enhanced our Phishing Campaign creation options to give you more flexibility and customization when phishing your users! You can now: Phish your users ...
It's all over the press. Here is a quote from Reuters: "Yahoo Inc said on Thursday information associated with at least 500 million user accounts was stolen from its network in 2014 by ...
Earlier this year we posted about Jsocket, a highly malicious Trojan that we spotted being delivered through phishing emails shared with us via the Phish Alert Button (PAB). Although ...
Phishing attacks using false Apple Store email messages, fake landing pages and sometimes fake login pages are still a very popular attack vector. They still make it through all the ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. Anyone who works a job in the computer security industry inevitably develops a kind of dark appreciation for the mad skills so often ...
Andra Zaharia (the picture is really her) from the Danish Heimdal Security wrote something interesting this morning that I thought you'd like to know:
KnowBe4's Templates Mistress Katie has been busy again adding a new batch of phishing templates to the collection of "System Templates" available to active subscribers.
Most scams on the internet are "short con" scams, compare them to hit & run. However, "long con" scams have started to show up that can take a few months to finally steal the money. ...
CNBC reported some pretty stunning breaking news. I cannot come up with a better case for new-school security awareness training for employees in accounting and HR. A lawsuit filed on ...
*|CyberHeistNews|* CyberheistNews Vol 6 #38 [ALERT] The FBI Warns That Ransomware Attacks Are Getting More Dangerous And Expensive In an alert published this week, the U.S. Federal Bureau ...
Intel Security's McAfee Labs Threat Report for September 2016 provides insight into the latest security statistics and trends, ranging from botnets to ransomware to malware "zoos." Large ...
SecurityAffairs just published a new discovery that you need to know about. A Brazilian Infosec research group, Morphus Labs, just discovered a new Full Disk Encryption (FDE) ransomware ...
In an alert published today, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned that recent ransomware variants have targeted and compromised vulnerable business servers (rather than ...
Here’s an example of a highly targeted ransomware attack, with bad guys using a phony Bank of Montreal (BMO) template to social engineer possible victims into clicking on a malicious ...
Intel Security today released its McAfee Labs Threats Report: September 2016, which assesses the growing ransomware threat; surveys the “who and how” of data loss; explains the practical ...
We are seeing a big phishing wave with a social engineering attack that threatens with a personalized lawsuit using the domain name of the targeted victim. This is an interesting payload ...
Kaspersky has a fascinating blog post on a new strain of ransomware called RAA that is not only fairly sophisticated, but incredibly abusive:
Hard drive manufacturer Seagate was sued by its own employees as the result of a successful CEO fraud attack where all the personal information of 10,000 existing and former employees ...
Larry Abrams at Bleepingcomputer reported on a new strain that raises some eyebrows. "A new version of the Stampado ransomware called Philadelphia has started being sold for $400 USD by a ...
We spotted an unusual phishing email which revealed a new scam your users will soon find in their inbox. Time to inoculate them before it becomes a problem! Many online service providers ...
For the last 9 years I have been a board member of the public/private Clearwater Downtown Partnership. And as many public organizations, all the board member information is freely ...
The following question was posted in the SANS Securing The Human forum. I thought it was a very good point and asked our VP Product Greg Kras for his perspective. First the question:
A customer sent us this: Hi, I wanted to share with you a funny story…. My boss calls me into her office, very serious like. She sits me down and asks “Did you use the company credit card ...
Hi All, KnowBe4 is looking for a few good people. Specifically we are hiring a QA Engineer and a Senior Ruby Developer. Know anyone? Send them to our Jobs page on the website. KnowBe4 is ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. Yesterday we spotted an unusual phishing email that we'd like to share with readers. If nothing else, it tells us that the increased ...
The Tampa Bay Business Journal published an interview with FBI Special Agent Lawrence Wolfenden. Wolfenden is a 25-year veteran of the FBI, the lead agency for investigating cyber attacks ...
Microsoft recently came across a threat that uses social engineering but delivers a different payload than the usual Office document with macros. Its primary purpose is to change a user’s ...
Larry Abrams at Bleepingcomputer reported on a new strain with a few unusual features: "A new ransomware that pretends to be from a fake organization called the Central Security Treatment ...
The Smoking Gun reported: "SEPTEMBER 2--The FBI’s Hillary Clinton investigation turned up evidence that her e-mail accounts were targeted in multiple “spear phishing” attacks, one of ...
Want someone's credentials? Just social engineer them. Phishing is still responsible for 91% of data breaches and has been for the last few years. A Russian cyber mafia has created a ...
KnowBe4 has been running the HackBusters site for a few years now, providing you with trending IT security news. We are expanding it and have launched a new exciting online community! You ...
Earlier in August, one of the world's largest cable manufacturers Leoni AG publicly confessed that it had fallen victim to a classic CEO Fraud attack that has cost the company a whopping ...
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that "A Russian hacking group linked to a series of computer intrusions at the Democratic National Committee and other organizations is now ...
KnowBe4's Templates Mistress Katie has added two new categories to the System Templates: 1) SCAM OF THE WEEK - this will act as an optional weekly newsletter for you to send to your ...
So I get the Andreessen Horowitz newsletter. It has a topic called "Security is a protoscience (and more on 'so you want to work in security') - Michal Zalewski" I'm intrigued so I click ...
Earlier this week today we assisted several companies that were hit by ransomware. Although companies and organizations hit by ransomware can usually pinpoint the source or employee ...
Several days ago we posted about a new ransomware campaign pushing Cerber through malicious ZIP files attached to voicemail-themed phishing emails. Fast on the heels of that campaign ...
One of our customers received the following email today. It's a clear extortion attempt, they are threatening to execute a combined DDoS and Cerber ransomware attack. These bad guys claim ...
Don't play voicemail messages from suspicious sources. Example displayed in MS Outlook. Image credit: SANS ISC.
CyberheistNews Subscriber Stuart Sanders sent me this: "A friend of mine in Melbourne Australia has been whacked by several crypto attacks on his clients in the last week. He supports ...
A new report by Check Point software's researchers showed that Cerber's Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) affiliate program is a success with more than 160 participants at current count, and ...
REUTERS just reported that the Clinton charitable foundation hired the security firm FireEye to examine its network after seeing indications they might have been hacked by Russians, ...
The dangerous Locky ransomware is being hurled at a variety of industries, healthcare being the number one target, according to FireEye researcher Ronghwa Chong. We have talked about ...
All user accounts may now be enabled to require MFA (multi-factor authentication) [also called 2FA, 2 Factor Authentication]. Once configured and enabled for an account the system will ...
I have some exciting news: KnowBe4 made it in the Inc 500! To start off with, a very big thank you to all our customers who understood the need to manage the ongoing problem of social ...
While at BlackHat, the editorial team from DARKReading wanted to know more about what we were doing at KnowBe4. This was a fun, relaxed 15 minutes where we chatted about problems like ...
'Just weeks after she started preparing opposition research files on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort last spring, Democratic National Committee consultant Alexandra Chalupa ...
With the popularity of PokemonGo, it was inevitable that a malware developer would create a ransomware that impersonates it. This is the case with a new Hidden-Tear ransomware discovered ...
Security experts detected and analyzed a new threat, the Hitler ransomware, that doesn’t encrypt files but simply deletes them. Larry Abrams at Bleepingcomputer commented: " It looks like ...
Bad guys are abusing the Social Security Administration's (SSA) online service called My SocialSecurity Account in two ways: A phishing scam which encourages employees to create an ...
The ransomware market is rapidly maturing, we start seeing upgraded strains and rebranded versions sold cheaply in the Dark Web. And mainstream media have finally glommed on after years ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. As we have documented numerous times in this space over the past few years, the bad guys have proven to be relentless innovators, ...
The annual Black Hat security conference always produces a wealth of interesting papers, presentations, talks, live demos, and security news. This year's Black Hat USA 2016 event, which ...
*|CyberHeistNews|*
Score another one for the bad guys, who have yet again demonstrated their seemingly inexhaustible ability to concoct new methods to exploit legitimate services in order to bypass existing ...
You may not have heard of Atlanta-based Pindrop Labs. They have developed an innovative way to detect fraudulent phone calls called a "phone print", and their solutions reduce fraud ...
Over the past few weeks our Phishing Templates Mistress Katie and her team have added 17 new templates for use by customers in their simulated phishing campaigns.
Illegally downloading television shows and movies from a variety of torrent websites is done all the time. The HBO series, "Game of Thrones" is the #1 downloaded, not surprisingly. This ...
The cybermafia behind the Petya/Mischa ransomware just launched their RaaS offering July 25th. It pays "distributors" a part of the ransom that gets extorted from victims and increases ...
Here are the top 5 Cyber Attack Maps found in Google. They all seem to show the cyber attacks in a slightly different perspective. This is the Norse attack map as an example:
The background is based on current state-of-the-art password cracking technology. In short, hackers penetrate the network, get access to a domain controller and pull the file with all ...
The PR people at Avast decided to have some fun and created a series of fake Wi-Fi networks at various locations around the Republican National Congress in Cleveland. Avast’s team set up ...
A new malware strain dubbed "Delilah" is being sprung on unsuspecting victims visiting "popular adult and gaming sites." The goal of this malware, which is currently being classified as a ...
For just $39 you, too, can have your very own ransomware with a lifetime license. What does a year's subscription to one of the major antivirus cost? Last I checked, much more than $39. ...
In case you just came back from vacation, there literally is a new craze going on with an augmented-reality smartphone app called Pokémon Go. It's a geocaching game, meaning it's tied to ...
Locky is currently one of the top 3 ransomware threats, following closely behind CryptoWall. It's not surprising that this strain has undergone several updates since the beginning of the ...
Brian Honan wrote a GREAT post at HelpnetSecurity. This is a cross-post of his excellent article, nothing changed, all the internal links to helpnet security were left in place. "There is ...
There is a new strain of "ransomware" that does not bother with the whole encryption thing at all. These bad guys seem to think it's just an unnecessary distraction and too much work. ...
The number of data breaches keeps going up. Last week it was more than 1,000 Wendy's where credit card records got ripped off. Fraudsters quickly use the news release of a high-profile ...
Shocking video of people's private lives are streaming over the internet. Hackers are able to easily tap into personal security cameras and stream them on websites for the world to see, ...
The ransomware market is rapidly maturing, we start seeing upgraded strains and rebranded versions sold cheaply in the Dark Web. And mainstream media have finally glommed on after years ...
What is the true cost of a data breach? After analyzing a health plan breach, research firm Deloitte says the toll of a cyberheist is significantly underestimated. The firm in a report ...
KnowBe4 is expanding fast, we now have 120 employees and we just hired a new controller late May to help out our very busy CFO. Part of the KnowBe4 onboarding is getting through our ...
NOTE: This is for KnowBe4 Customers only. Top IT analyst firm Gartner has just created a new "Peer Insights" review site. As a customer, we are inviting you to create a review of KnowBe4 ...
(Tampa Bay, FL) July 1, 2016 --- KnowBe4 announced its explosive year over year growth of 454% for Q2 2016, with a record number of 655 new corporate accounts in June alone, rising to ...
Proofpoint researchers discovered a new strain of ransomware called "Bart" - no kidding. The Russian Cyber Mafia behind Dridex 220 and Locky are using the RockLoader malware to download ...
A recent study by Cloudlock, a cyber security company, revealed several popular apps that could allow hackers an easy gateway to access your personal information.
Executive boards need better cyber security training, given half of C-level execs fall victim to phishing attacks, according to research conducted by security firm AlienVault. The ...
Apparently, MS Office 365 built-in security tools are not cutting it. A new strain of the Cerber Ransomware is now targeting MS Office 365 email users with a massive zero-day attack that ...
Remember that in a gray past, Intel had an antivirus product called Intel LanDesk Virus Protect? Well, that Intel LanDesk Virus Protect got acquired by Symantec in 1998, and Intel must ...
A researcher in China has discovered a design flaw in Microsoft Windows that affects all versions of the operating system using NetBIOS spoofing —including Windows 10— and lets an ...
Don’t be surprised if you see spam coming from the top websites in the world. Lax security standards are allowing anyone to "spoof" emails from some of the most-visited domains, according ...
Threatpost reported that the notorious Necurs botnet is back in business, after mysteriously going dark for nearly a month. Researchers report the Necurs has returned to spewing massive ...
National Geographic has done a special on Kevin Mitnick and it plays this Sunday!
We have just released the first long-time study focusing on IT Pros experience with ransomware. In June 2016 we surveyed 1,138 companies in a variety of industries and compared your ...
I have been following the development of ransomware closely since September 2013 when the ransomware plague was unleashed on the internet in the form of CryptoLocker and its copycats. At ...
Larry Abrams, who runs Bleepingcomputer was first to report on a new strain of ransomware called RAA. The criminal coders took the somewhat unusual step of writing the whole thing in ...
Just when you think they cannot sink any lower, criminal internet scum is now exploiting the tragedy in Orlando. Unfortunately, from this spot I have been warning about these lowlifes ...
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) this week said the scourge it calls the Business Email Compromise continues to rack-up victims and money – over $3 billion in losses so ...
A member of the SpiceWorks IT forums reported he had received a new type of hybrid attack: first a phone call to his desk, followed up with a phishing email laced with malware, promoting ...
We all know that two-factor authentication (2FA) is much better than just simple user/password credentials. However, there is a nasty spoofing trick that bypasses 2FA if the user does not ...
Heads-up! Individual ransomware payments are getting very expensive. Companies are stockpiling Bitcoin in case they are hit, and a new low-profile strain of ransomware is actually causing ...
Mike Mosedale at the Minnesota Lawyer wrote: "Talk about your dirty tricks. A new internet scam is targeting lawyers by exploiting one of their great fears: getting slapped with a ...
Your employees are being attacked both inside and outside the office. This new email extortion scam called CEO fraud can hit in both places, so it makes sense to warn them about this ...
KnowBe4 gets regular calls from system admins who found us on the internet that are between a rock and a hard place. Backups failed and they have no way to revert to normal files. Worse, ...
Oh boy. Things have gotten from bad to worse in an awful hurry. I remember the first time I reported on ransomware in the CyberheistNews Issue Feb 11, 2014, where an attorney's office ...
Gottfried Leibbrandt, chief executive of the world’s largest interbank funds-transfer system SWIFT, has said repeatedly that the prospect of cybercrime is what keeps him awake at night. ...
We have created a new infographic for your users, as part of your ongoing security awareness training program. It's a few good reminders how to stay safe online, and to keep their ...
A short report by Flashpoint gives us some insight into a recent ransomware campaign, which so far has generated a serious amount of profit considering it takes little effort to operate.
In its most recent Phishing Trends Report, the APWG noted a 250% increase in phishing sites between October 2015 and March 2016 — and the 2016 increase shows the never ending criminal ...
There has been a whopping 3500% increase in ransomware domains in the first quarter of 2016, compared to the last quarter of 2015. Those are the highlights of a new report by network ...
Here is a great way for C-level execs to lose their job: allow your company to become the victim of CEO Fraud. That happened to the CEO and CFO of FACC, part of both Airbus' and Boeings' ...
US cyber-security firm Fortinet reports that, between April 1, 2016, and May 15, 2016, the top five most prevalent ransomware families were in this order: CryptoWall (41.04%), Locky ...
Security Researchers at Forcepoint discovered that a Russian hacking forum on the dark web is selling the Cerber ransomware as a RaaS (Ransom-as-a-service). This is a new form since ...
In March, we posted a story about a cyberheist where hackers tried to steal a cool 1 Billion dollars from the Bangladesh Central Bank, but a simple typo thwarted most of their attempt. ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4's Principal Lab Researcher Remember .PIF files? If you're like us, the extension probably rings a bell somewhere deep in the dustiest recesses of your mind -- the ...
Heads-up! There is a spike in phishing attacks with Summer Olympics themes, and in the coming months the bad guys are going to be all over this. Kaspersky Labs researchers are reporting ...
Microsoft released an alert about a new ransomware strain called ZCryptor, which works like a worm and spreads via removable and network drives. The MalwareForMe blog reported this first ...
DMA Locker is an excellent example of cybercrime's furious speed of innovation. Version 1 showed up in January 2016, and V2 a month later, but the implementation of the encryption ...
Comodo Threat Research Labs just posted an alert that a massive campaign of phishing emails have been sent with a spoofed "from" address: auto-shipping@amazon.com. The subject is “Your ...
Excuse my French, but Holy S#!+, some ransomware developers have created a new evil way to monetize their operations by adding a DDoS component to their malicious payloads. Security ...
You probably remember the 2012 LinkedIn data breach. It was a big deal because something like 6.5 million user account passwords were posted online, but LinkedIn never confirmed the final ...
Someone interested in using our integrated platform for training and phishing asked us: ""What methodologies does KnowBe4 use in developing our training?" We use the ARCS Model. ARCS is ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4's Principal Lab Researcher So you've subscribed to Security Awareness Training that includes training modules as well as simulated phishing campaigns for your ...
Last night a customer sent us a phish via the KnowBe4 Phish Alert Button ( free download here) that must win some kind of award for the longest chain of required user interactions -- all ...
In a case of sophisticated social engineering, a fraudster created a fake profile of actor Vincent Gallo. He then proceeded to engage in a 2-month long scam, flirting online and sending ...
Larry Abrams from the Bleepingcomputer site noted: "In a surprising end to TeslaCrypt, the developers shut down their ransomware and released the master decryption key. Over the past few ...
Tech support scammers have come up with a new way to trick users into sharing their payment card information: screen lockers showing fake Windows alerts telling users that their Windows ...
It turns out that HR giant ADP, which provides payroll, tax and benefits administration for more than 640,000 companies, was vulnerable to an ID theft scam. The criminal hackers made off ...
Tech Support Scams are nothing new, but the bad guys are furiously innovating and there is a new variation you need to warn your users about. A few years ago this started out with bogus ...
That's what Larry Abrams from Bleepingcomputer started out with yesterday, and he was right! We have had six new ransomware strains, one new RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) and one major ...
As a new story about hospital ransomware or a stolen laptop containing PHI seemingly emerges every day, it comes as no surprise that healthcare data breaches have steadily increased in ...
It's an interesting question, because the specific circumstances were explained in an article about this particular incident. There were 186 answers to this poll, and here are the results ...
An interesting Q1-16 threat report from the folks at Proofpoint. Every day, they analyze more than 1 billion email messages, hundreds of millions of social media posts, and more than 150 ...
A new twist on the Petya ransomware and how it now uses a backup ransomware attack. Remember, Petya is a new type of ransomware that doesn’t encrypt specific files but makes the entire ...
Infragard warned that the FBI has identified two Android malware families, SlemBunk and Marcher, actively phishing for specified US financial institutions’ customer credentials. The ...
In an email provided to TechCrunch, the House technology service desk warned representatives of increased ransomware attacks on the House network. The email warns that attackers are ...
IT Security analyst Ben Tomhave calls himself an infosec obsessive and I admire his insightful analyses when they appear. This time he commented on the recent attacks that followed the ...
Our CTO was picking up some groceries and saw this at the check-out, stolen straight out of a spear phishing email... or was it? LOL.
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4's Principal Lab Researcher Over the past six to nine months .DOC and .JS file attachments have dominated the news surrounding the rise in phishing attacks. The ...
An employee at a Troy, Mich., investment firm fell for a CEO Fraud attack and was social engineered into transferring almost $500,000 to a Hong Kong bank. The error was noticed eight days ...
How Can I See If My Users Have Vulnerable Browser Plugins Installed? Within your console, you can automatically detect what vulnerable plugins any clickers on your phishing tests have ...
Verizon yearly does a comprehensive report on security and data breaches. It is excellent ammo to get budget approval for new-school security awareness training. Why? Hundreds of security ...
If you've been in the IT trenches over the past year, you've probably noticed the announcements of new strains of ransomware are accelerating. The research team at Proofpoint just ...
Yesterday, April 25 2016, we encountered a new phishing email being delivered through Zendesk. The credentials phish itself is a straightforward social engineering attack. The email body ...
Now here's a new hybrid nasty that does a multitude of nefarious things. Proofpoint researchers found that it was built by the same cyber mafia that's behind the Reveton malware. A few ...
In this Scam Of The Week we are warning against a new wave of phishing scams. In the industry this is called the "secure doc" theme. It's getting very popular with the bad guys. We see a ...
Today, news broke that Prince Rogers Nelson was found dead in his home in Minneapolis at age 57. He was found unresponsive in an elevator and was declared dead shortly after. He performed ...
It's the old story. A disaster strikes and 24 hours later you get emails with urgent request for help as hundreds of wounded victims need food, water and shelter. And the bad guys are at ...
CyberheistNews Vol 6 #16 FBI: "Ransomware On Pace To Be A 1 Billion Dollar Business In 2016" CNN Money reports about new estimates from the FBI show that the costs from ransomware have ...
Ransomware attacks cause downtime, data loss, possible intellectual property theft, and in certain industries a ransomware attack is now looked at as a possible data breach. Ransomware is ...
A mysterious update in the behavior of the CTB-Locker ransomware strain alerted security researchers to pull some strings and see what was going on. The CTB-Locker ransomware family, ...
CNN Money reports about new estimates from the FBI that show the costs of ransomware have reached an all-time high this year. Threat actors made $209 million in the first quarter of 2016 ...
OK, here is great ammo to get more IT security budget. Why? This article and infographic make it real to the C-suite that they themselves have a big phishing target on their back. You all ...
An as yet unknown American company fell victim to nearly $100 million in CEO Fraud. Employees were social engineered by spoofed emails that claimed to be one of its legitimate vendors, ...
By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. A few days ago our friends at BleepingComputer.com announced the discovery of a new form of ransomware, which they dubbed Jigsaw ...
Pinellas County resident Scott Germak thought he was getting free Tampa Bay Rays tickets based on a phishing email that appeared to be a legitimate message coming from GTE Financial, his ...
Cisco's Talos Labs researchers had a look into the future and described how ransomware would evolve. It's a nightmare. They created a sophisticated framework for next-gen ransomware that ...
We have several cool new features in the Spring 2016 release! These features were previously out of reach for IT managers with limited budget, and we're excited you can use them now with ...
*|CyberHeistNews|*
A new ransomware strain called CryptoHost was discovered, which claims that it encrypts your data and then demands a ransom of .33 bitcoins to get your files back (~140 USD at the current ...
Ransomware is now one of the greatest threats on the internet. In the past, IT Security firms used to monitor spear-phishing attacks by espionage outfits, but these techniques are now ...
Great story by Erika Kinetz at the Associated Press. How Mattel was the victim of CEO Fraud using phishing and social engineering to trick one of their executives in China to make a $3 ...
It's happening in the UK today, and you can expect it in America tomorrow [correction- it's already happening today]. The bad guys in Eastern Europe are often using the U.K. as their beta ...
We're stoked here. We got 1st place for the Tampa Best Places To Work - small business category!!! The Tampa Bay Times has a yearly "Best Places To Work" contest, and surveys the ...
Been suspecting that your users are plugging in any USB stick they find, to see what is on it? Well, you are right, they actually do that. Fresh scientific research by Google, and the ...
A brand new Alert by the FBI on April 4th 2016 warns of a major increase in what they call business email compromise or BEC (we call it CEO Fraud), amounting to a whopping $2.3 billion in ...
[UPDATE April 10, 2016] Petya's ransomware's encryption has been defeated and a password generator has been released. See bottom of the post. March 25, news came out about a new type of ...
KnowBe4, the United States’ most popular integrated platform for security awareness training and simulated phishing tests, announced it attained a top spot (#220) in the Cybersecurity ...
It is now confirmed, The MedStar Hospital Chain was hit with ransomware and has received a digital ransom note. A Baltimore Sun reporter has seen a copy of the cybercriminal's demands. ...
Phishing attacks usually have a payload of infected attachments. With the recent ransomware attacks on hospitals I was asked for a press quote and the word "Attackment" suddenly came into ...
The Washington Post reported that a ransomware infection penetrated the computer network of MedStar Health early Monday morning, forcing the Washington health care behemoth to shut down ...
When a user clicks on a link in a simulated phishing attack, or opens an attachment, we record the IP address of the request. For various reasons, KnowBe4 customers have requested us to ...
[UPDATE] See new information at the bottom of this posts. A phishing scam posing as a speeding ticket email with a malicious link is nothing new. But here's an innovation that should give ...
Tripwire just published a new study which suggests that a majority of businesses might not be adequately prepared to either prevent or fully recover from ransomware infections. They ...
Lucian Constantin at CSO had the scoop. A new ransomware program written in Windows PowerShell is being used in attacks against enterprises, including health care organizations, ...
Security researchers at Trend Micro have found a new type of ransomware that doesn’t encrypt specific files but makes the entire hard drive inaccessible. The malware has been named Petya ...
CSO Online found a great infographic created by the folks of Smartfile. They started out with: "What will the cause of your next security breach? Will it be your firewall? Will it be your ...
Maktub Locker is the name of a new Russian strain of ransomware. The word Maktub is Arabic for "fate", suggesting it is inevitable you will get infected with ransomware. They have spent a ...
Ransomware continues to be a successfull business for the cybercriminals of the world. It can easily get past even the best anti-virus software through a user just clicking once on ...
Responsible for IT Security?
A modified version of EDA2, an open source ransomware strain developed by Turkish computer engineering student Utku Sen, --by the way, thanks Utku, that was a very smart idea-- has been ...
The FBI and Microsoft have issued a new alert, a warning of hybrid targeted ransomware attacks that attempt to encrypt an organization’s entire network. This is a new approach where ...
Reuters was the first out with a story about criminal Chinese hackers also trying to get into the ransomware racket. They started out with: "Hackers using tactics and tools previously ...
It's tax season and the bad guys are in full swing. They try to get your Accounting or HR team to send over the W-2s of all employees, but they also target employees in the office and/or ...
According to a new survey by Intermedia called "2016 Crypto-Ransomware Report", ransomware attacks are increasingly targeting larger companies, costing them dearly. Employees are usually ...
We have added a dozen new phishing templates in the past few days. All are based on actual bad guy phishing emails seen in the last 2 weeks. At least one is less than 24 hours old. Most ...
TeslaCrypt is a relatively new ransomware variant which has made it in the Top 5, and has rapidly innovated in its efforts to evade detection. The latest version which is one of the most ...
Over the weekend, The NY Times, BBC, Newsweek, AOL, MSN, The HIll and other major news sites had their ad networks hijacked again by criminals using the Angler Exploit Kit to deliver ...
KnowBe4 has immediately responded to Dridex's Locky ransomware attack by releasing a new attachment option which is called "MS Office document with Macro". This new option allows a ...
One thing that is driving mainstream recognition of ransomware is the move by the Dridex banking Trojan gang into ransomware with their Locky strain. They have taken over from CryptoWall, ...
Check the orange slice depicting the percentage of ransomware exports. I found this on someone's twitter feed and loved it!
It helps to know how to spell when you try to rob a billion from a dirt poor country. A spelling mistake thwarted hackers in stealing a $1 billion dollars from the Bangladesh Bank, and ...
There is a new strain of ransomware called Cerber that takes creepiness to the next level. It drops three files on the victim's desktop named "# DECRYPT MY FILES #." These files contain ...
OK, heads up! This tax season there is a widespread new scam that specifically targets your HR and Accounting professionals. They get an urgent email from "the CEO" who asks them for all ...
A phishing incident has compromised the personal information of 11,000 Pennsylvania Main Line Health employees. Officials said the incident occurred on Feb. 16 when an employee fell for a ...
CyberheistNews Vol Vol 6 #9 How To Suck At Information Security – A Cheat Sheet Lenny Zeltser is a business and tech leader with extensive experience in Infosec. His areas of expertise ...
A Snapchat employee fell for a W-2 phishing scam last week, compromising the identity information of other existing and ex-employees. The FBI calls this a Business Email Compromise, also ...
This morning, our Controller received an email from "me", stating the following: Alanna I want you to send me the list of W-2 copy of employees wage and tax statement for 2015, I need ...
Danielle Correa at SC Magazine wrote: "A Bitdefender global study with respondents from the UK, the US, France, Germany, Denmark and Romania was conducted by iSense Solutions to discover ...
Netflix’s popularity continues to grow fast, and they recently launched their streaming service globally. Obviously that makes them a hacker target. At the moment, there are active ...
Apple this week released a statement regarding what has been an ongoing battle for months. The FBI requested that Apple unlock the encypted iPhone belonging to San Bernadino shooter Syed ...
[UPDATED FEB 22, 2016] It was only a matter of time, but some miscreant finally did it. There is a new ransomware strain somewhat amateurishly called "Locky", but this is professional ...
The bad guys have been awfully busy these last few days. Here is your ransomware roundup with the latest "new features".
Since releasing its free PhishAlert button in November 2015, KnowBe4 has been receiving a steady stream of emails flagged by users as potential phishing attacks. The email threats ...
We had a data scientist take a look at more than 4 years of aggregated clicking data and he came up with some interesting results, expressed in graphs. Here are some of the highlights:
Here is a short summary of why we are asking for your vote: Highest growth in customers over all competitive products Most complete suite of anti-phishing tools Easy-to-use, ...
You may be aware of Steven Weisman, Esq. He writes a great daily blog called Scamicide, and is a is a nationally recognized identity theft expert, experienced university lecturer, proven ...
An unexpectedly large number of WordPress websites have been mysteriously compromised and are delivering the TeslaCrypt ransomware to unwitting end-users. Antivirus is not catching this ...
Hi Guys, this is too good to miss. Check out this brand new article in Forbes Magazine. They started out with:
I found a very interesting article at the ValueWalk site about the FDIC requiring banks to improve their cyber security, they started out with:
There is an enormous amount of noise in the security space, so how do you know what people really talk about and think is the most important topic? Well, we created the Hackbusters site ...
1) I was going to write up all the ransomware related news and then ran across this article by Senior Editor Sara Peters at Darkreading. Saves me some time! She started out with: ...
Between 3 and 4 million smartphones are stolen every year. It's your modern-day purse snatching. Many people put their entire private and work lives on these devices that can cost up to ...
Larry Abrams had the scoop: "A new ransomware has been spotted called 7ev3n that encrypts your data and demands 13 bitcoins to decrypt your files. A 13 bitcoin [almost $5,000] ransom ...
As you may have heard, KnowBe4 has released a no-charge Outlook Add-in that allows your employees to report phishing attacks to your Incident Response team with just one click. It's ...
The Belgian Crelan Bank was the victim of a 70 million euro (75.8M U.S.) fraud that was launched from another country. They claim (PDF) this CEO Fraud was discovered during an internal ...
Effective security awareness training for your high-risk employees is becoming a major priority. The accounting team of FACC, who design and manufacture aircraft components for Boeing and ...
Paychex wrote a great article about the urgency of creating a cyber security culture in your business. This is excellent ammo to send to your C-level execs: "Creating a cyber security ...
As you may have heard, KnowBe4 has released a no-charge Outlook Add-in that allows employees to report phishing attacks to their Incident Response team with just one click. It's called ...
This is a real one. A number of people using Dell PCs have been contacted by scammers claiming to be Dell Tech Support who actually had specific data that only Dell could have had. We're ...
A new study by Enigma Software revealed the hardest hit cities in the country when it comes to computer viruses. Tampa was ranked #2 for malware infections per person. That's 842% above ...
Researchers discovered a sample of ransomware that damages files permanently. The malicious code is based on the work of Turkish Oktu Sen security researchers, who last year made their ...
This is a real one. A number of people using Dell PCs have been contacted by scammers claiming to be Dell Tech Support who actually had specific data that only Dell could have had. We're ...
For this Scam Of The Week, we decided to go out on a limb and run a "What If" scenario" on an attack that we think is very likely.
(Tampa Bay, FL) January 11, 2016 --- KnowBe4 announced its explosive year over year growth of 358% for Q4 2015, with a record number of new corporate accounts and a stellar customer ...
Cybercrime has piggybacked on the extremely successful SaaS model and several strains of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) like TOX, Fakben and Radamant have appeared in 2015
Cybercrime has piggybacked on the extremely successful SaaS model and several strains of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) like TOX, Fakben and Radamant have appeared in 2015. However, a new ...
"I feel like a complete idiot. I just got taken by a LinkedIn spam that may have just stolen my banking password." These words dropped in my inbox, written a while ago by Dan Tynan, ...
I received this the last day of the year from a Director of IT Security who works at a mid-size credit union. "Stu, I think you’ll be interested in my story. If you want to share it, just ...
Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher over at our friends at Malwarebytes reported about a new, in-the-wild tech support scam that has moved from Amazon Web Services to Rackspace's ...
