Human Risk Management Blog

Social Engineering

Latest social engineering news, analysis, tactics the bad guys are using and what you can do to defend your organization.

Business Email Compromise and “Confidential” Mergers and Acquisitions

A newly identified criminal organization has been observed running a large number of business email compromise (BEC) scams. Since February 2021, Abnormal Security reports the gang has ...

[Finger on the Trigger] How the FBI Nuked Russian FSB's Snake Data Theft Malware

The Five Eyes member nations' cybersecurity and intelligence agencies dismantled the infrastructure of the Snake cyber-espionage malware that was operated by Russia's Federal Security ...

Blocking Social Engineering by Foreign Bad Actors: The Role of the New Foreign Malign Influence Center

The U.S. government created a new office to block disinformation. The new Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC) oversees efforts that span U.S. military, law enforcement, intelligence, ...

[Eye Opener] HTML Phishing Attacks Surge by 100% in 12 Months

The Cyberwire reported: "Barracuda released a study this morning indicating that HTML attacks have doubled since last year.

Response-Based Business Email Compromise Contributes to 97% of Attacks

The malwareless and seemingly benign nature of business email compromise emails, mixed with impersonation techniques, are difficult to spot as being malicious, making them even more ...

Malware Downloads Facilitated by Social Engineering

The most common route for malware infections remains social engineering in its various forms: phishing, vishing, etc. Such approaches take advantage of users’ deliberately cultivated ...

[Feet on the Ground] Stepping Carefully When Making an AI Your BFF

Bloomberg's Brad Stone wrote an op-ed covering this topic. In the past month, a chatbot called "My AI" or "Sage" has appeared as a new friend for several hundred million Snapchat users. ...

The Two Best Things You Can Do To Protect Yourself and Organization

Since the beginning, two types of computer attacks (known as initial root cause exploits) have composed the vast majority of successful attacks: social engineering and exploiting ...

Automate Reporting for Security Awareness Training Events and Suspicious Email Remediation Management with Cortex XSOAR and KnowBe4

Security teams face unique challenges in today’s rapidly-changing landscape of phishing, malware, and other social engineering and cybersecurity threats. Collaboration across disparate ...

Heart of the Matter: How LLMs Can Show Political Bias in Their Outputs

Wired just published an interesting story about political bias that can show up in LLM's due to their training. It is becoming clear that training an LLM to exhibit a certain bias is ...

[Eyes Wide Shut] Fed Powell's Call with Russian Pranksters Exposed as Social Engineering

It was all over the news. Fed's Jerome Powell was social engineered by Russian pranksters posing as Zelensky.

Does ChatGPT Have Cybersecurity Tells?

Poker players and other human lie detectors look for “tells,” that is, a sign by which someone might unwittingly or involuntarily reveal what they know, or what they intend to do. A ...

Latest QBot Attacks Use a Mixture of PDF Attachments and Windows Scripting Host Files to Infect Victims

QBot malware seems to be outliving its competitors through innovative new ways to socially engineer victims into helping install it.

Recruiting Money Mules

Money mules play a subordinate but important role in the criminal economy. They’re used to move stolen funds around, a low-level version of illicit remittance and money laundering. ...

Another Perspective on ChatGPT's Social Engineering Potential

We’ve had occasion to write about ChatGPT’s potential for malign use in social engineering, both in the generation of phishbait at scale and as a topical theme that can appear in lures. ...

FBI Warns of Sextortion Scams that Yield a New Equally Scam-Like Service: Sextortion Assistance

A FBI bulletin highlights a new twist in the sextortion game: companies claiming to assist with addressing sextortion who use deceptive social engineering tactics to coerce victims into ...

Guarding Against AI-Enabled Social Engineering: Lessons from a Data Scientist's Experiment

The Verge came out with an article that got my attention. As artificial intelligence continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, the potential for its misuse in the realm of ...

That Email Isn’t from the New Jersey Attorney General

Earlier this month, state employees in the US state of New Jersey began receiving emails that falsely represented themselves as originating with the state’s attorney general.

[Arm and a Leg] Cyber Insurers Are Worried About The Long-tail Cost of Attacks

[BUDGET AMMO] James Rundle at The Wall Street Journal today published a very interesting article about the long-term costs of cyber attacks and the fact that cyber insurers are getting ...

London NatWest Bank Warns Customers of Alarming Impersonation Scams

National Westminster Bank, the London-based bank familiarly known as NatWest, has warned its customers to be on the alert for emails pretending to be from NatWest, but which in fact are ...


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