Resources

Blog

Understanding Why Spear Phish Are Highly Effective

  In the Oscar-winning movie The Sting, Harry Gondorff (played by Paul Newman) explains to his apprentice Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) that the con that they set up must be so convincing that their mark, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) won't even realize that he's been taken. Today, Gondorff and Hooker might not have needed to use a past-posting scheme to con Lonnegan. Instead...
Blog

How To Tackle the Hidden Threat of Social Media

  As a marketer I am all too familiar with how social media can benefit or damage a brand. On the one hand, social media offers an easy and (sometimes) free way to communicate with customers, prospects, and partners that many brands have used to great advantage. But on the other hand, it's yet another source of potential threats to an organization's infrastructure and...
Blog

Silent Librarian University Attacks Continue Unabated in Days Following Indictment

  On Friday, March 23, nine Iranian threat actors were indicted for stealing massive quantities of data from universities, businesses, and governments all over the world. If you've been following our blog (or the news), you already know the actors are associated with an organization called the Mabna Institute, and are responsible for stealing more than 31 terabytes of data...
Blog

New Variant of BankBot Banking Trojan Ups Ante, Cashes Out on Android Users

  A newly observed variant of BankBot has been discovered masquerading as Adobe Flash Player, Avito, and an HD Video Player. This variant, now detected by PhishLabs as BankBot Anubis, was first identified on March 5, 2018.  BankBot Anubis takes mobile threats to the next level incorporating ransomware, keylogger abilities, remote access trojan functions, SMS interception,...
Blog

The 11 Types of Reported Emails

  You receive an email, you are unfamiliar with the sender's name or email address, and they are offering you a new service or deal on something. Is it malicious? Not necessarily. Perhaps you forgot about signing up for a newsletter a while back. Malicious Versus Benign According to Symantec, 55.5 percent of business emails are considered spam emails, with the average...
Blog

Adwind Remote Access Trojan Still Going Strong

   A Java-based Adwind Remote Access Trojan campaign has been observed sending spam emails containing a malicious JAR file under the guise of “Request For Quotation,” “Transfer Import,” “Swift Copy,” “Proforma Invoice,” “DHL Delivery Notification” and many others.  Adwind, also known as jRAT and JSocket, is a cross-platform remote access tool designed to run on Mac OS, Windows...
Blog

Nigerian 419 Scams: How to Spot a Phish

  All through October, in aid of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (#CyberAware) we’re putting phishing under the microscope. In each post we’ll take a close look at one specific type of phishing, including the actors responsible, who it targets, and how/why it works. Today, we’re a true phishing classic: Nigerian 419 scams. We've put the 15 best practices for spotting...
Blog

BEC Scams: How to Spot a Phish

  All through October, in aid of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (#CyberAware) we’re putting phishing under the microscope. In each post we’ll take a close look at one specific type of phishing, including the actors responsible, who it targets, and how/why it works. Today, we’re exploring one of the most audacious phishing tactics: Business email compromise (BEC) also...
Press Release

The Phishie Awards: (Dis)Honoring The Best Of The Worst Phishing Attacks

The FBI dubbed the category of attacks “business email compromise” in an August advisory. At that time, the Bureau estimated that, since 2013, the total dollar losses to American companies exceeded $740 million, while only hitting around 7,000 targets. When international victims are added in, the losses total $1.2 billion. Don Jackson, threat researcher and malware analyst for...
Blog

When Good Websites Turn Evil: How Cybercriminals Exploit File Upload Features to Host Phishing Sites

  Compromised websites are an integral part of the cybercrime ecosystem. They are used by cybercriminals to host a wide range of malicious content, including phishing sites, exploit kits, redirects to other malicious sites, and other tools needed to carry out attacks.  Why? One reason is because there is an abundance of insecure websites around the world that can be easily...
Press Release

Three more firms hit by targeted phishing attacks seeking W2 data

It’s happened again. Scammers have leveraged Phishing to gain access to W2 information at several firms, including technology powerhouse Seagate. No company is immune to these types of social attacks, and organizations both large and small have become victims to a finance-based scheme that has a long reach. Last week, Sunday in fact, Snapchat disclosed that someone had posed...
Blog

Olympic Vision Keylogger and BEC Scams

  During a recent analysis of a business email compromise (BEC) scam, we observed a lure attempting to install the Olympic Vision Keylogger. Further research determined that this keylogger and the accompanying Olympic Vision Crypter were used in a larger campaign, targeting multiple organizations using a variety of different lures, including invoice lures and shipment...
Press Release

The Hunt for the Financial Industry’s Most-Wanted Hacker

From Bloomberg The malware known as ZeuS and its rogue creator have been at the cutting edge of cyber-crime for nearly a decade. With repeated enhancements, ZeuS and its offspring became juggernauts of cyber bank robbery—turning millions of computers into global networks of zombie machines enslaved by criminals. Conservative estimates of their haul reach well into hundreds of...
Blog

Fraudsters Take Advanced Fee Scams to the Next Level

We've all seen them before. The late prince Abdul has left us millions in inheritance and we need only provide a minor convenience fee to receive the funds. Advanced fee scams are nothing new and have been circulating the Internet since its inception. Until now, scammers have relied on email correspondence and convincing legal jargon to con victims out of their hard-earned...
Blog

Vulnerabilities found in Dendroid mobile Trojan

  On Friday, the full source code of the Dendroid Remote Access Trojan (RAT) was leaked. Dendroid is a popular crimeware package that targets Android devices and is sold on underground forums for $300. Usually the source code for botnet control panels is encrypted, so it was surprising to find the full source code for the Dendroid control panel included in the leaked files....
Blog

Phishing Takedown Anti-Phishing Phishing Protection

  Phishing is a prevalent problem for businesses, particularly financial institutions. Over the years, many services have emerged to help organizations address phishing attacks that are targeting their customers' accounts. When seeking solutions, businesses find they have several options to choose from. These fall into three categories: Phishing takedown services Anti...
Blog

Advancements in Phishing Redirector Scripts

Almost since the beginning of phishing, attackers have created simple webpages that redirect users to another URL that contains the actual phishing form. They do this for several reasons. In case their phishing site is shutdown, they can simply change the destination of the redirect to point to another phishing site. This means that everyone who receives an email with the...