Security Awareness Training Blog

Phishing Blog

Learn about current phishing techniques, notable campaigns and attacks, what to watch out for 'in the wild', and more.

New PDF-Based Phishing Attack Demonstrates that Office Docs Aren’t Passé – They are Just Obfuscated!

Security researchers have discovered a cunning PDF-based phishing attack that leverages social engineering and PDF prompt specifics to trick users into opening malicious Office docs.
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142 Million Customer Records From MGM Resorts Leaked for Free Download

The availability of such a massive number of records at no cost to any cybercriminal interested is a recipe for countless phishing campaigns using the data itself as a means of ...
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New Phishing Campaign Uses ChatBot Functionality to Build Trust and Steal Credit Card Details

Rather than go for the phishing jugular and point the victim immediately to a webpage to steal credentials or personal details, a new phishing campaign uses a chatbot to lower victim ...
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Monkeypox Scams Continue to Increase

Attackers are taking advantage of the current news about monkeypox to trick people into clicking on malicious links, Pickr reports. Researchers at Mimecast have spotted a phishing ...
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Facebook Phishing Scam Steals Millions of Credentials

Researchers at PIXM have uncovered a major Facebook Messenger phishing scam that’s “potentially impacted hundreds of millions of Facebook users.” More than eight million people have ...
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40% of CSOs say Their Organization is Not Prepared for Cyberattacks as Phishing is the Top Likely Cause of Breaches

A new survey of executives sheds light on how well organizations fared with cyberattacks in the last 12 month as well as what attack vectors are going to increase future breaches.
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Old Dog, New Trick: Hackers Use Logons in URLs to Bypass Email Scanners

A new phishing method uses a decades-old special URL format to take advantage of how security solutions and email clients interpret URLs, tricking victims into clicking.
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Phishing Attacks Reach an All-Time High, More Than Tripling Attacks in Early 2022

Reaching more than 1 million attacks in a single quarter for the first time, new data on phishing attacks in Q1 of 2022 show an emphasis on impersonation and credential theft.
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FTC Warns that Scammers are Turning to Cryptocurrencies

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned that people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams since the beginning of 2021. The vast majority of these losses were ...
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Homographic Domain Name Phishing Tactics

Bitdefender warns that Microsoft Office applications are vulnerable to phishing tactics that exploit international domain names (IDNs). Affected applications include Outlook, Word, Excel, ...
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Why We Recommend Your Passwords Be Over 20-Characters Long

KnowBe4 just released its official guidance and recommendations regarding password policy. It has been a project in the works for many months now, but we wanted to make sure we got it ...
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Smishing and Home Delivery

A smishing campaign is impersonating the UK-based delivery company Evri with text messages informing recipients that their package couldn’t be delivered, according to Paul Ducklin at ...
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SideWinder Targets Pakistani Entities With Phishing Attacks

The India-aligned APT SideWinder is using a variety of social engineering techniques to target Pakistani government and military entities, according to researchers at Group-IB. The threat ...
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U.K.’s National Health Service Becomes the Latest Victim of a Credential Harvesting Phishing Operation

Part of a six-month attack, email accounts on the NHS’ Microsoft 365 instance were compromised, resulting in over 1,100 targeted email attacks used to obtain more credentials.
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Phishing Attacks Rise 54% as the Initial Attack Vector Across All Threat Incidents

As cybercriminal groups hone their craft, one analysis shows them shying away from zero-day exploits, use of valid accounts, and third-party vulnerabilities to gain initial access during ...
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Phishing Campaign Targets QuickBooks Users

Accounting software provider Intuit has warned of a phishing scam targeting its customers, BleepingComputer reports. The phishing campaign affected users of Intuit’s QuickBooks product, ...
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The $44 Million Smishing Problem and How to Not Be a Victim

Consumer Affairs reported on how big of a problem SMS phishing scams have become, and how it's about to get a lot worse. According to a recent FBI report, more than 320,000 Americans were ...
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Verizon: Ransomware Involved in 25% of Data Breaches as Credentials and Phishing are Seen as “Key Paths” for Attack Success

With the much-anticipated annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report finally released, we get a view of ransomware from the data breach perspective that points to a common weakness ...
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Phishing Scammers Benefit from Shady SEO Practices to Rank Better Than Legitimate Domains

So-called “Black Hat SEO” services have popped up on Dark Web forums bringing advantageous search results to anyone willing to pay a small monthly fee.
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New IRS Phishing Scam Uses Fake Notices to Steal Microsoft 365 Credentials

Scammers use an “overdue tax bill” along with a sophisticated and obfuscated javascript-based “invoice” attachment to identify targeted victims, validate credentials, and transmit them ...
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