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.

Kiwi Drivers Phished with Bogus License Renewals

The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has warned of an ongoing email phishing campaign using fake vehicle license renewal reminders, 1 News reports. The emails appear legitimate and ...
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Happy Hotel With a Sad Ending

Tokyo, Japan-based Almex which operates the Japanese Happy Hotels announced it has been hacked and that customer data including email address, birth date, gender, phone number, log in, ...
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Nobel Laureates Get Scammed, Too

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times Opinion columnist Paul Krugman appears to have been taken in by a phishing scam, Business Insider reports. In a tweet that’s since been ...
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Security-Related and Giveaway Phishing Email Subject Lines Get the Most Clicks

KnowBe4 revealed the results of its Q4 2019 top-clicked phishing report. The results found that simulated phishing tests with an urgent message to check a password immediately were most ...
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Hackers Target the Special Olympics of New York and Use them to Launch Phishing Attacks

This latest attack demonstrates how cybercriminals can leverage one organization as merely a part of a larger phishing campaign to scam countless individuals out of credentials or money.
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Fast Work By Cops Recovers $710,000 After CEO Fraud Attack Hits Long Island County Government

Finally some good news. Newsday reports that in record time, Nassau County, New York, recovered $710,000 that was transferred to scammers who were impersonating an existing county vendor.
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Texas School District Loses $2.3 Million In BEC Scam

Texas’s Manor Independent School District was the victim of a costly 2.3 million dollar Business Email Compromise (BEC) scam in November of 2019.
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Auto Dealership Becomes Latest Victim of Ransomware Attack Costing Up to $500,000

The opening of a seemingly benign email from a coworker by an unsuspecting employee set in motion an attack that brought operations to a halt and resulted in some costly remediation. The ...
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Microsoft Sues Hacker Group for Data Theft of Highly Sensitive Information

A new recently unsealed lawsuit against a North Korean hacker group shows how even the largest companies can be successfully attacked by phishing.
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An Overview of Phishing from the Accounting Sector

Employee training is an essential long-term defense against phishing attacks, according to David Barton and Kimberly Anderson at UHY Advisors. In an article for Accounting Today, Barton ...
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[Scam Of The Week] Don't Fall For This Tricky: “Start your 2020 with a gift from us”

Paul Ducklin at Naked Security warned us about a scam that just surfaced and promises a gift by courier from overseas where the other person hasn’t told you what they’re sending – the ...
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Cybercriminal Offers a “How To” Guide for Robbing Banks; Uses Cayman National Bank as the Example

This latest document from notorious hacker Phineas Phisher, along with a leaked report from PwC, shows how easy it is for a bank to be hacked and defrauded.
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Phishing Attacks Impersonating Canadian Banks Work So Well, the Campaign Has Been Running for Two Years

As part of a massive ongoing phishing campaign, the same group of attackers leverage hundreds of lookalike phishing websites to steal from unsuspecting banking customers. Security ...
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The Top 5 Eyeopener Strategies To Improve Your IT Defenses And Keep Bad Guys Out Of Your Network

Last year, in 2019 according to CVEdetails, there were 12,174 new, publicly announced vulnerabilities. If that sounds like a high number, it’s a lot less than the previous two years. We ...
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New Office 365 Phishing Attack Targets OAuth Apps Instead of Credentials

Trying to steal your username and password is so “yesterday.” The 2020 Hacker is now leveraging Office 365 OAuth APIs to gain control over user mailboxes with phishing tactics.
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The Better the Phishing Protection Gets, the More Sophisticated Phishing Attacks Are Getting

Microsoft’s review of how phishing has evolved over the last year highlights some of the great lengths attackers will go to in order to avoid being detected as a phishing campaign.
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Of Course, Scammers Exploit Fears of Iranian Hacking

A new phishing campaign is attempting to frighten people into handing over their credentials by claiming Microsoft was hacked by Iran, BleepingComputer reports. The campaign is ...
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December Content Update: Includes New Versions of Email Exposure Check Pro and Phishing Security Test Tools

Here are a few important updates to share with you from the month of December.
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Smishing Examples & Defenses

Smishing is phishing via Short Message Service (SMS) on a participating device, usually a cell phone. Long neglected by phishers and spammers, smishing has recently become a very common ...
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Mobile Threats Shouldn't be Overlooked

Phishing attacks against mobile devices can be just as damaging to an organization as attacks targeting workstations and laptops, according to a market report by Cyber Security Hub. ...
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