Resources

Blog

Digital Risk Protection vs. Threat Intelligence

Digital Risk Protection (DRP) continues to gain momentum and attention among CISOs and security professionals. DRP, an operational security function once classified under Threat Intelligence (TI), has been elevated by the Gartner Hype Cycle and other analyst research as an emerging security function that security teams rely on to address multiple external cyber threat use cases. Many...
Blog

How to Take Down Social Media Threats

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...
Blog

Social Media Intelligence: Cutting Through the Noise

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...
Blog

APWG: SSL Certificates No Longer Indication of Safe Browsing

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has released its Phishing Activity Trends Report analyzing phishing attacks and identifying theft techniques reported by its members for Q2 of 2020. Key highlights of the report include a significant increase in wire transfer loss attributed to business email compromise (BEC) attacks and a 20% increase in BEC attacks targeting the social media sector. In...
Blog

Royal Ripper: Multi-Stage Phishing Attack Adapts to Victim Input

PhishLabs is monitoring a multi-stage phishing campaign that impersonates government entities and telecoms to target financial institutions and their customers. The threat actor behind the attacks has been designated Royal Ripper. The initial stage of the attack harvests personal information and the sort code of the victim's bank. It then uses the sort code to redirect the victim to a second...
Blog

Navigating Social Media Threats : A Digital Risk Protection Playbook

Social media is rapidly growing as a preferred channel for threat actors targeting enterprises with malicious campaigns. Half of the global population uses social media, and a post containing sensitive data or impersonating a high-level executive can be shared instantly, for 3.8 billion people to see. There are many types of social media threats that bad actors use to harm their victims,...
Blog

Data Leaks in 2020: Accelerated Digital Transformation Exposes Enterprises

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...
Blog

Gartner Releases Emerging Tech Report: Critical Insights into Digital Risk Protection

Driven by expanding use cases, approachable intelligence, and the incorporation of premium services, demand for Digital Risk Protection Services (DRPS) has grown over the last 12 months and continues to increase. In Gartner's latest Emerging Technologies report, the author cites the broad range of use cases DRPS addresses as one reason for this growth, including: Brand protection (ex:...
Press Release

PhishLabs Recognized as a Best Places to Work for Fifth Consecutive Year

Charleston-based cybersecurity company is named a top employer in South Carolina. July 20, 2020, Charleston, SC – PhishLabs, the leading provider of Digital Risk Protection solutions, has been recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in South Carolina for the fifth consecutive year. The award honors the state’s top-notch employers who create a positive work environment where employees can...
Blog

Account Takeover Attacks Cause Chaos @ Twitter

On Tuesday afternoon, dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked to promote cryptocurrency scams. Threat actors took over the accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, and many others. Corporate Twitter accounts were also hijacked, including those belonging to cryptocurrency companies. What does this mean for enterprises and their security teams? Threat actors...
Blog

Gartner Releases 2020 Hype Cycle for Security Operations

Digital Risk Protection has emerged as a critical new capability for security teams. It protects critical digital assets and data from external threats across surface, dark, and deep web sources. In Gartner's latest Hype Cycle for Security Operations, the author writes “This technology accelerates the breadth and depth of protecting digital assets in an organization by significantly improving...
Blog

Spoofed Domains Present Multifaceted, Growing Problems for Enterprises

Threat actors are increasingly registering new domains to launch malicious campaigns against enterprises. Identifying suspicious domains, as well as monitoring existing ones for changes, is an overwhelming and reactive task for many organizations. In order to minimize the risk spoofed domains pose, security teams must be able to efficiently detect abuse and understand what is required to...
Blog

Executive Impersonation Techniques on Social Media

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...
Blog

Abuse of HTTPS on Nearly Three-Fourths of all Phishing Sites

Since 2015, PhishLabs has and continues to track how threat actors abuse HTTPS or SSL certs. In particular, threat actors often use HTTPS on their phishing sites to add a layer of legitimacy, better mimic the target site in question, and reduce being flagged or blocked from some browsers. Last year, threat actors hit a significant milestone in this usage when more than 50% of phishing sites...
Blog

FBI Warns of Growing Mobile Banking App Threats

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published a public service announcement Wednesday warning the public of anticipated cyber attacks that exploit increased usage of mobile banking apps. The advisory comes at a time when a vast majority of Americans are working from home due to social distancing, and as a result, rely more on mobile apps to do their banking. According to the report, there...
Blog

Data Leakage on Social Media: Credit Card Info, Confidential Docs

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...
Blog

Social Media Platforms Latest Channels used to Leak Sensitive Data

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...
Blog

Threat Actors Impersonate Brands on Social Media for Malicious Purposes

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...
Blog

Reporting Cyber Threats: Executives at Risk

Across the cybersecurity industry, white papers and reports typically highlight high-level trends related to cyber threats. However, what is often overlooked is a more granular analysis that focuses on individuals within an organization. More specifically, the high-value targets that threat actors focus much of their attention on. As part of an ongoing series, PhishLabs will examine how...
Blog

COVID-19 Phishing Update: File Sharing Services Abused to Steal Credentials

As enterprise workforces continue to transition to remote environments, online file sharing and cloud storage tools are becoming a frequent, if not necessary means of collaboration. While abusing these types of platforms is nothing new to threat actors, the lures they use are now taking advantage of the novel coronavirus. The two examples below demonstrate how. We are providing ongoing...