In this guest blog, Dr Ed Amoroso, CEO, Tag Cyber, provides a high-level overview of the Fortra cybersecurity portfolio value proposition based on a mapping of its component solution offerings to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) phases. Forty years ago, an engineer in Minnesota decided that computer costs for the IBM System/38 were getting too high. So, he began investigating and building...

Phishing site volume increased 28% over the course of 2021, according to PhishLabs Quarterly Threat Trends & Intelligence Report. Attacks last year displayed increasingly volatile behavior on a month-to-month basis, often intermixed with a variety of attack vectors. Despite a lack of congruency, phishing unequivocally remains the most dominant attack method targeting organizations. Every quarter,...

In Q3, more than 75% of threats observed on the Dark Web were related to stolen credit card and debit card data, according to PhishLabs’ Quarterly Threat Trends & Intelligence Report. While there are significant volumes of malicious activity targeting industries on the Dark Web, the extensive nature of credit card fraud makes this threat type the most pervasive. Every quarter, PhishLabs analyzes...

Phishing attacks targeting consumers during 2021 have increased nearly 32% from 2020, according to PhishLabs’ Quarterly Threat Trends & Intelligence Report. While trends have been erratic, multiple spikes in activity continue to make phishing the most dominant attack method on the threat landscape. Threat actors are experimenting with a variety of tactics to target enterprises with these attacks,...

Ransomware continues to grow as a thriving underground economy with limited risk and little barrier to entry. Ransomware attacks are supported by a robust ecosystem of dark web services, where many of the tasks needed to carry out an attack can be outsourced. These tasks are increasingly available and sold by threat actors who specialize in them. In this post, we take a look at Initial Access...

Financial institutions have experienced a 15.3% increase in share in phishing attacks, according to PhishLabs’ Quarterly Threat Trends & Intelligence Report. This increase establishes financial services as the top targeted industry and shows threat actors continue to place high value on compromised banking credentials. In this post, we take a look at the tools and infrastructure used by threat...

To stage a phishing site, cybercriminals have several options. They can use a legitimate domain that has been compromised, they can abuse free hosting services, or they can register their own domain. Understanding the prevalence of each scenario is fundamental to detecting and mitigating these threats as early in the attack process as possible (including before they've been launched). PhishLabs...

Most phishing campaigns use social engineering and brand impersonation to attempt to take over accounts and trick the victim into divulging their credentials. PhishLabs has uncovered a previously unseen tactic by attackers that uses a malicious Microsoft Office 365 App to gain access to a victim's account without requiring them to give up their credentials to the attackers. In this technique,...

The life of a phishing site is brief, but impactful. A study published earlier this year found the average time span between the first and last victim of a phishing attack is just 21 hours. The same study observed the average phishing site shows up in industry blocklist feeds nearly 9 hours after the first victim visit. By that time, most of the damage is done. Blocklists are an important...

Widely-used URL tracking systems are often abused in phishing attacks. The domains used by these systems are commonly known and trusted, making them attractive carriers for phishing URLs. To illustrate how it works, this post breaks down a recently-observed phishing attack that uses Google Ads' tracking system to evade email filters. How it works Piggybacking on a domain is appealing to...

PhishLabs is monitoring a threat actor group that has set up fraudulent hosting companies with leased IP space from a legitimate reseller. They are using this infrastructure for bulletproof hosting services as well as to carry out their own phishing attacks. The group, which is based in Indonesia, has been dubbed Planetary Reef. Planetary Reef is most notable in how they host phishing...

The digital presence of today's enterprise looks very different than it did earlier in the year. The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing rapid change on how many businesses use technology. From transitioning to remote workforces to delivering new online services, digital transformation initiatives that would normally span years are happening in weeks and months. Under these conditions, the likelihood...

PhishLabs' Email Incident Response analysts recently identified a phishing campaign leveraging novel tactics in the ongoing war between threat actors and security teams. In addition to presenting a unique twist on a popular lure theme, the campaign leverages a clever combination of tactics by attackers attempting to defeat email security technologies to great effectiveness. PhishLabs observed...

Ambassadors of security training programs often struggle with the most effective way to drive success. The ultimate purpose of these programs is to change employee behavior and create a more secure organization. Put simply, behavior is influenced by either reinforcement (i.e., encouraging employees to perform behaviors that we like) or punishment (i.e., discouraging employees from performing...

You have carefully selected a training program. Employees are completing the courses. And yet, they are not reporting suspicious emails and their passwords are made up of favorite sports teams and graduation dates. What is missing? Research shows that implementing training alone, as good as it may be, is not enough. We have learned that the transfer of new knowledge and behaviors on-the-job is...

In honor of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CSAM), Dane Boyd, PhishLabs' Security Training Manager, and I will share a series of posts covering topics from cybersecurity to organizational learning and development. We are kicking off the series by covering a topic near and dear to my heart: taking a programmatic approach to implementing a security training program. A fatal flaw...

As the manager of a security awareness team, whose primary goal is to educate users on how to spot phishing attacks, I often get asked, “can you make the phishing simulations look like real-world phish?" This is when I show people what real-world phishing attacks look like. Because our SOC analyzes millions of phishing emails each year, we have a great data set to choose from. Outside of...

Although computer-based training has been on the scene for over two decades, it is only recently that learning professionals have begun to optimize it. Often these courses present hours of content in a single learning experience. While the flexibility of computer-based training offers convenience, learners are often overloaded and overwhelmed by the amount of information presented to them. ...

In the cyber security world, few research reports are more widely respected than Verizon's annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). The DBIR—which is based on data from publicly disclosed security incidents, Verizon's Threat Research Advisory Center, and dozens of industry contributors—is one of the most detailed and comprehensive reports available to the security community. So when...