Security Awareness Training Blog

Social Engineering Blog

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

[Heads Up] Microsoft: Ransomware Gangs That Don't Threaten To Leak Your Data Steal It Anyway

That means you can from now on count a ransomware infection as a data breach with all the consequences that this brings. Moreover, the so-called "human-operated" ransomware gangs have ...
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[Click Alert] So, What Is The Phish-prone Percentage On Recent Coronavirus Phishing Tests?

I had some numbers run on the usage of our new, dedicated COVID-19 phishing templates to find out what the Phish-prone percentage was, since this is an unprecedented worldwide event. ...
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Postcards from a Film Director. The challenges of creating a sitcom during COVID-19 Lockdown

By Jim Shields, Managing Director of U.K.-based Twist & Shout - a KnowBe4 company. When we first created Restricted Intelligence over seven years ago, we had no idea it would be so ...
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COVID-19 Emails go From Zero to Half a Million a Day in Just Three Months

According to new data from security researchers at Forcepoint, the interest in coronavirus-themed emails and websites by cybercriminals is cause for concern.
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New COVID-19 Malware Variants Render Your Endpoints Useless

Forget cybercriminals out to steal your money and credentials. Security researchers are now finding more malware intent on rewriting master boot records and wiping file systems.
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Netflix Scams Target People Sheltering in Place

With people sheltering in place during the pandemic emergency, they’re both teleworking and finding their entertainment online. Google searches for Netflix jumped 142% since the advice to ...
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It’s Look-Alike Day: While Doppelganger Humans Can Be Funny, Domains Are Not

On April 20, we celebrate National Look-Alike Day. It’s the perfect time to see which people have similar features as you, instead of that completely normal person you bumped into at the ...
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Damage From Phishing Doubles For Dutch Banks

Dutch banks saw damage from phishing double last year compared to the previous year. This concerns both phishing for 2FA security codes and phishing for credit and debit card numbers, ...
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[Heads-Up] Hacking Attacks Double Against Users Who Now Suddenly Work From Home

Reuters just reported that hacking activity against corporations in the United States and other countries more than doubled by some measures last month as digital thieves took advantage ...
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Re-Opening the American Economy? Malicious Actors Have a Plan...

By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher. If you've been following the news over the past week or so then you know that a robust debate has opened at federal, state, and local ...
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Phishing Trend: Quality, Not Quantity?

A new report from CyberCube found that sophisticated cybercriminals are increasingly shifting to launching business email compromise (BEC) attacks against executives, Insurance Business ...
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When the Implausible Seems, Well, More Plausible

Everyone is vulnerable to social engineering and no security tool can block every phishing email, according to Kevin Casey at The Enterprisers Project. Casey talked to a number of ...
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Phishing *Better* Than the Bad Guys During the Pandemic

By Katie Brennan, KnowBe4 Product Content Director. The COVID-19 pandemic has had cyber criminals in a phishing frenzy for months. They’ve been sending countless attacks, with the ...
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Novel, but Retrospectively Obvious: a QR Code Generator Scam

A scammer has stolen more than $45,000 worth of bitcoin over the past month by tricking people with fake QR code generators, ZDNet reports. Harry Denley, Director of Security at MyCrypto, ...
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Hackers have hit every country on Earth with coronavirus-themed cyberattacks

Cyber criminals have launched coronavirus-themed cyberattacks in 241 countries and territories, new research from Redmond showed. "Every country in the world has seen at least one ...
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Struggling with the Whole WFH Thing? Fear Not! The Bad Guys are Here to Help!

By Eric Howes, KnowBe4's Principal Lab Researcher. Over the past month we have provided readers with regular updates on the growth and development of Coronavirus-themed phishing emails ...
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NASA sees an “exponential” jump in malware attacks as personnel work from home

Ars Technica reports that NASA has experienced an exponential increase in malware attacks and a doubling of agency devices trying to access malicious sites in the past few days as ...
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Share the Red Flags of Social Engineering Infographic With Your Employees

Social engineering and phishing are responsible for 70% to 90% of all malicious breaches , so it’s very important to keep your employees at a heightened state of alert against this type ...
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Phishing Trends Recap of COVID-19 Related Phishing Schemes

Our Chief Evangelist Strategy Officer Perry Carpenter took a bit of time and summarized the crazy month of March 2020 looking at the exponential growth of COVID-19 themed phishing attacks.
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Bad News from the (Fake) CDC: You've Got Malware

Malicious actors continue to probe organizations' security and defenses with malicious emails explicitly crafted to create and exploit sense of panic in the wake of the COVID-19. Over the ...
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