Security Awareness Training Blog

Spear Phishing Blog

Learn about current spear phishing attacks, specific examples, and techniques the bad guys are currently using so your users don't fall for these attacks.

Pentagon Top Brass Spear-phished

The Pentagon divulged that its computer networks were penetrated by suspected Russian hackers using spear-phishing. The hackers got into their unclassified email network used by the Joint ...
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Leaked NSA slides: Chinese hackers wreaking havoc on USA

I have been talking for years at this blog about the Chinese hacking into the U.S. for mainly espionage, using highly sophisticated social engineering and spear-phishing attacks. This ...
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Spear Phishing Attack Results In $5.3 Million Bitcoin Cyberheist

"Newly leaked, confidential documents have revealed details into a cyberattack aimed at Bitstamp, a company that fundamentally deals as a cryptocurrency trader, according to a report in ...
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Woman conned out of £50,000 in shrewd spearphishing scam

In a variation of the "CEO Fraud", spearphishing is getting more up close and personal. Read this story and apply the lesson learned in your own life before you lose your life savings. ...
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Some Interesting Security Awareness Computer-Based Training Numbers

You may know Gartner, the 800-pound gorilla in the IT Analyst space. When a market is mature enough they create their so-called Magic Quadrant (MQ) with the leading vendors in that ...
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IBM: 'Dyre Wolf' Cyber Gang Uses Spear Phishing For $1 Million Cyberheists

Last week, IBM Security reported on an active cyberheist campaign using a variant of the Dyre Trojan that has successfully stolen more than $1 million at a time from targeted enterprise ...
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ALERT: New Ransomware Spearphish Uses One-Click Dropbox Attack

The cyber-mafia is stepping up the pressure. As you know, there are several competing gangs that are furiously innovating in an attempt to grab as much money as possible. Call it a ...
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Premera And Anthem Both Hacked Using Shrewd Social Engineering

Health records are the new credit cards. They have a longer shelf life and are often easier to get. There are more opportunities for fraud. No wonder that bad guys are after them with a ...
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Report: 71 percent successfully spear-phished in 2014

Adam Greenberg at SC Magazine reported on something interesting:
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Spear Phishing Attack Nearly Costs FL City $500K

A spear-phishing last month at Orange Park City Hall almost got away with $500,000 from the city's bank account. Fortunately it was caught in time so that a wire transfer that already had ...
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Billion Dollar Carbanak Cyberheist

As promised, here is more data about the Carbanak cyberheist in addition to the original post First of all, a map that shows the IP addresses of the institutions that were hit. Kaspersky ...
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World's Biggest Cyberheist Cybergang Phished $900 Million Out Of Banks

More than 100 financial institutions in 30 countries have been the victim of a cyberheist that lasted in some cases almost 2 years. This was not a smash-and-grab but a highly ...
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Spear Phishing Attack Makes $17.2 Million In Three Days

Corporate cybercrime on an international scale has hit one of Omaha’s biggest and oldest companies. CEO Chuck Elsea's email address was spoofed and this cost them millions because their ...
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Data Breach at Health Insurer Anthem 80 million records

Last updated Feb 7, 2015 - Both the Wall Street Journal and cyber security blogger Brian Krebs reported that Anthem Inc., the nation’s second largest health insurer disclosed that hackers ...
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NY Times: North Koreans hacked Sony with spear-phishing attacks.

The next revelation about the Sony Picture hack: The NSA was already inside the North Korean's networks and could have warned Sony about the pending attack.
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Nine Data Breaches That Cost Someone Their Job

Following last year’s big announcement of not just Target’s data breach but executive job loss, CSO lays out 9 data breaches resulting in job loss. They compare Target alongside other ...
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Phishing Attack on German Steel Factory System Caused Massive Damage

Hackers breached security of a German steel mill's network and caused considerable damage by manipulating the controls of a blast furnace. The attackers gained access to the network ...
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Malware Used To Wipe Sony's Drives Was Quick And Dirty

It's still not clear (and it may never be discovered) how the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea (DPRK) hackers came in, perhaps they used all available threat vectors since ...
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Hackers Spear-phish ICANN And Compromise DNS Zone System

It does not get any worse than this. Or better than this, if you are a criminal hacker. Domain-name management organization ICANN announced it has been hacked and its DNS zone ...
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Ransomware Beats APT In Terms Of Severe Impact

MalwareBytes Research showed that in the year 2014, 82% of companies were attacked online. Their research also showed that browser vulnerabilities will be the biggest challenge going ...
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