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...

Threat actors increasingly use social media to attack brands, VIPs, and customers. The types of threats on these platforms are diverse and each social network has different policies in place for how they respond to reported attacks. As a result, mitigating threats on social media can be a frustrating and time-consuming process for security teams. In this post, we break down some common social...

Social media is rapidly becoming the preferred online channel for threat actors. Almost four billion people use some form of social media, and organizations are increasingly reliant on company pages, executive presence, and positive customer interaction to build a strong brand. As a result, a malicious post or tweet can cause irreversible damage to an enterprise. Last year, 53% of all...

Threat actors are masquerading as executives on social media for purposes of stealing credentials and damaging popular brands. Today, many executives have accounts on these platforms to network as well as post content promoting their companies. Unfortunately, it is easy for bad actors to create fake accounts and reach massive audiences by impersonating well-known individuals. These types of...

When the term data leak comes to mind, most enterprises think of the dark web. Although compromised information can damage an organization when distributed through gated and anonymous platforms, we are seeing social channels being used to allow for a more rapid and potentially destructive outcome. These platforms have an overwhelming number of global participants, with almost half of the world...

Threat actors are using social media accounts to expose and sell data that has been compromised. While information found on many of these platforms has traditionally been disclosed by enterprises and individuals with intent, cyber criminals are taking information acquired by means of scams and data breaches and promoting their sale on various social platforms not always monitored by security...

With more than 2.95 billion people now estimated to use social media, an organization's online presence directly relates to the satisfaction of its customers, as well as its profits. False or misleading images or comments connected with a brand on online platforms can swiftly impact the reputation or even financials of an otherwise successful company. While most individuals have been...

Threat actors are using the novel coronavirus to add credibility in recent Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks. Below are three examples of how they are doing it. We are providing ongoing updates on coronavirus-themed attacks observed by the PhishLabs team. This post and others are meant to help the security community stay up-to-date on how threat actors are exploiting the pandemic. ...

Threat actors are using social media to engage in money-flipping scams abusing the novel coronavirus. The two examples below demonstrate how they are doing it. We are providing ongoing updates on coronavirus-themed attacks observed by the PhishLabs team. This post and others are meant to help the security community stay up-to-date on how threat actors are exploiting the pandemic. The...

In the past few weeks, our team highlighted how social media is abused by threat actors seeking to steal credentials and to administer phishing attacks. While these are both two of the most prominent cybersecurity threats distributed through social media, there are some other tactics in play, too. Join us on February 6 to discuss the latest social media-based financial scams. This week we're...

Today's marketing organization uses countless SaaS-based tools and platforms that live outside of an organization's network. As their digital footprint grows, so does their potential for digital risks targeting their enterprise, brands, and customers. Even if they don't join the latest social media platform, in most cases there are not proper online brand protections in place to ensure...

Social media is undoubtedly a huge asset to modern organizations. It helps them spread their message, promote their products and services, and communicate directly with customers, and users. Along with those benefits, social media also presents a unique threat. Never before has it been so easy for threat actors to abuse the trust built up by an organization, damage its reputation, profit...

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...

Social media-based phishing attacks have taken off in a big way. According to some estimates, social media now accounts for as much as 5% of all phishing attacks globally. When you consider that phishing volume has grown consistently every year for more than a decade (up 40% last year alone), that 5% constitutes a lot of attacks. This increase is no coincidence. Social media phishing attacks...

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...