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.

Why Are Insurance Companies Insisting To Pay Ransom For Ransomware Attacks?

This week, ProPublica published a report describing how insurance companies now prefer to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars / pounds / Euros in ransom to minimize the detriment ...

Financial Phishing Campaigns on the Rise

More than 1900 new potential bank phishing sites were registered in the first half of 2019, according to researchers at NormShield. Based on the increase in new suspicious domains ...

Business Detections of Ransomware Attacks Have Grown by 365%

The latest data from Malwarebyte’s report Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques: Ransomware Retrospective shows businesses are at risk of ransomware attack now more than ever.

Microsoft, PayPal, and Facebook are the Top Three Impersonated Brands

Back in June, we discussed Vade Secure’s “Phisher’s Favorite” report for Q1 2019, which found that Microsoft had been the most impersonated brand used in phishing attacks for four ...

Bogus Suicide Prevention as a Scam

A lowlife Colorado bail bondsman named Matthew Marre repeatedly posed as a law enforcement officer to trick T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon into giving him GPS data for his targets’ phones, ...

Even ‘Unsubscribe’ Emails Can Put the Organization at Risk

Social Engineering tactics seek to use any means that’s familiar to the intended victim – and unsubscribing is perceived as being so benign, it may just be the perfect way to fool your ...

Social Engineering Used To Establish Shady Bulletproof Hosting

Brian Krebs has reported that a dubious Internet provider, “Resnet,” was renting out tens of thousands of residential IP addresses to be used as proxies by fraudsters and spammers. ...

Are Local Government and Municipalities Part of a Coordinated Attack on the U.S.?

There are too many ransomware attacks to ignore the similarities. It’s either government networks are easy prey, or someone is trying to cash out on the U.S., one attack at a time.

Social Engineering Testing is Necessary to Fend off Phishing Attacks

The success of social engineering as part of phishing and spear phishing attacks has caused organizations to realize they need an effective tactic to make employees vigilant.

The Unusual Activity Would be the Warning Itself

BleepingComputer has come across a phishing campaign that’s spoofing “Unusual sign-in” warnings from Microsoft to steal users’ credentials. The emails look nearly identical to Microsoft’s ...

Still Dodging that Sextortion Bullet

It has long been true that sextortionists really had nothing on their intended victims. No video, no screen captures, nothing at all beyond shame and an uneasy conscience. Unfortunately ...

Security warning for software developers: You are now prime targets for phishing attacks

Danny Palmer at ZDNet wrote: "Software developers are the people most targeted by hackers conducting cyberattacks against the technology industry, with the hackers taking advantage of the ...

Scam Of The Week: See Jeffrey Epstein Last Words On Video

This weekend, news broke that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, apparently a suicide. This is a celebrity death that the bad guys are going to be exploiting in a variety of ways ...

Three Lessons from a Recent MegaCortex Ransomware Phishing Attack

The MegaCortex strain of ransomware has been used in criminal campaigns targeting businesses as opposed to private individuals. The QuickBooks cloud-hosting firm iNSYNQ, has sustained ...

Varieties of Extortion Experience

We are all familiar with ransomware and its increasingly dangerous cousin, wiper malware. The first encrypts your files and demands ransom payments in exchange for the decryption key. The ...

Here Are Some Interesting Headlines I Found During Black Hat

Black Hat 2019 - The Craziest, Most Terrifying Things We Saw: I ran into Neil Rubenking when I went to the Qualys party which was in the Foundation Room all the way on top of the ...

CEO Fraud hits B.C. lawyers for $2 million

Two B.C. law firms were targets of so-called social engineering frauds causing almost $2 million in real estate and investment funds to be wired to people other than clients the firms ...

New UK Study: "3 out of 4 phishing scams get to your inbox untouched"

Chris Matyszczyk wrote: "Apple sends me so many invoices every week that I scarcely know what I've gone and bought. This appears to have also crossed the minds of researchers at the UK's ...

Why School Districts are Targets of Social Engineering

School districts are becoming increasingly popular targets for ransomware, with at least five of these attacks occurring in July, according to the New York Times.

Freight Forwarding Email Scams are Business Killers

The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has warned that multiple Australian IT suppliers have permanently closed their doors after falling victim to procurement scams, CRN reports. ...


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