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PhishLabs Releases Q1 Threat Trends & Intelligence Report

Phishing Attacks Increase 47% in Q1 May 26, 2021, Charleston, SC – PhishLabs, the leading provider of Digital Risk Protection solutions, today released their Q1 Threat Trends & Intelligence Report. PhishLabs analyzed and mitigated hundreds of thousands of attacks targeting enterprise brands and employees in the first quarter of 2021. The report uses data from those attacks to determine key trends...
Q1 2021 Threat Trends Intelligence Report
Blog

Q1 2021 Threat Trends Intelligence Report

By Jessica Ryan on Wed, 05/26/2021
Phishing attacks in Q1 have increased 47% compared to last year, according to PhishLabs newly released Q1 2021 Threat Trends & Intelligence Report. The report uses data collected from hundreds of thousands of attacks analyzed and mitigated by PhishLabs in Q1 to identify top threats targeting enterprise brands, and determine emerging trends throughout the threat landscape. Key findings of...
Top 4 Digital Brand Threats
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Top 4 Digital Brand Threats

By Jessica Ryan on Fri, 05/21/2021
Threat actors routinely impersonate brands as part of their attacks. Brand abuse can occur anywhere online, and impersonating a reputable company automatically gives credibility to a threat that might otherwise be instantly identified as suspicious. Because brand impersonation is so broadly used across the threat landscape, security teams need to have complete visibility into the top brand...
Ransomware Playbook: Defense in Depth Strategies to Minimize Impact
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Ransomware Playbook: Defense in Depth Strategies to Minimize Impact

Thu, 05/13/2021
In 2020, ransomware attacks in the U.S. increased 139% year-over-year. Attacks are more strategic, demands are higher, and new tactics have emerged that leave victims experiencing the pressure to pay. Organizations that are affected by ransomware believe they are left with one of two choices: Refuse to meet ransom demands and risk the loss of data or, pay the ransom and hazard it released...
Example of a Phishing Email: Breaking Down the Latest O365 Phishing Techniques
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Example of a Phishing Email: Breaking Down the Latest O365 Phishing Techniques

By Jessica Ryan on Thu, 04/01/2021
Microsoft Office 365 phish are some of the most common threats that reach end users inboxes. Over the course of a two-year period, PhishLabs has observed that O365 phish have accounted for more than half of all reported phish by enterprises - by a significant margin. Today, we are highlighting a recent O365 campaign, and breaking down the techniques used to enhance the threat actor's odds of...
Look-alike Domain Mitigation: Breaking Down the Steps
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Look-alike Domain Mitigation: Breaking Down the Steps

By Jessica Ryan on Mon, 12/21/2020
Look-alike domains remain some of the most consistent elements of cyber attacks targeting organizations. At a high-level, there are two ways to mitigate the threat of a look-alike domain: remove the threat completely by taking it offline, or block attacks on your users by implementing IT security controls. If we dissect the construction of a look-alike domain, we see where each step in its...
The Anatomy of a Look-alike Domain Attack
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The Anatomy of a Look-alike Domain Attack

By Jessica Ryan on Fri, 12/11/2020
Cybercriminals register hundreds of thousands of look-alike domains every year to impersonate reputable brands and make a profit. These domains are used for a variety of attacks including phishing emails, fraudulent websites, web traffic diversion, and malware delivery. Look-alike domains are intentionally misleading to give customers the false impression that they're interacting with trusted...
The Year In Review: How COVID-19 Has Changed Cyber Security
Blog

The Year In Review: How COVID-19 Has Changed Cyber Security

By Jessica Ryan on Tue, 12/08/2020
The novel coronavirus has dominated 2020, and in the cyber community, threat actors have capitalized on its impact from the beginning. In early March we saw the first of what would be an onslaught of criminal activity using the pandemic to manipulate users, and over the course of the year these attacks have been modified to reflect local and global fallout. The coronavirus has not only...
APWG Q3 Report:Four Out of Five Criminals Prefer HTTPS
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APWG Q3 Report:Four Out of Five Criminals Prefer HTTPS

Thu, 12/03/2020
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), known for its collaborative analysis of phishing attacks and identify theft techniques, has released its Phishing Activity Trends Report for Q3 of 2020. Highlights from the report include more than two hundred thousand unique phishing websites detected in August and September, SSL encryption for phishing sites overtaking SSL deployment for general...
Easy to Deceive, Difficult to Detect, Impersonation Dominates Attacks
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Easy to Deceive, Difficult to Detect, Impersonation Dominates Attacks

By Jessica Ryan on Tue, 12/01/2020
Impersonation enables threat actors to manipulate victims into disclosing sensitive information as well as enhance their ability to commit fraud. An organization's name, logo, or messaging can be incorporated into almost any threat type, making it an easy and versatile element of a cyber attack. Impersonation is an especially difficult technique to defend against because of its diverse range of...
What is a Look-alike Domain?
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What is a Look-alike Domain?

By Jessica Ryan on Wed, 11/25/2020
By definition, a look-alike domain is a nearly identical, slightly altered domain name, registered with intent to deceive. Cybercriminals register hundreds of thousands of look-alike domains each year with the goal of impersonating legitimate brands and making money, usually by committing fraud. In this post, we'll describe how domains help us communicate on the Internet, the anatomy of a look...
Top 7 Use Cases for Digital Risk Protection
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Top 7 Use Cases for Digital Risk Protection

By Jessica Ryan on Wed, 11/25/2020
Today's enterprises are experiencing an accelerated digital transformation due to the pandemic, and adoption of initiatives that would normally span years are being fast-tracked to support remote workforces and transition to new platforms. The external digital landscape is also rapidly expanding, and organizations are being required to conduct business more frequently through non-traditional...
How to Detect Look-alike Domain Registrations
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How to Detect Look-alike Domain Registrations

By Jessica Ryan on Wed, 11/25/2020
Malicious domains are attributed to a wide variety of cyber attacks capable of undermining a brand's credibility. A spoofed domain is easy and quick to create, and can act as the catalyst for malicious email campaigns and phishing sites. In order to detect and action domain threats targeting your organization, security teams need to implement mature and progressive processes for collection and...
$2.3M Stolen from Wisconsin GOP via BEC Attack
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$2.3M Stolen from Wisconsin GOP via BEC Attack

By Jessica Ryan on Fri, 10/30/2020
With Election Day just around the corner, the Republican Party of Wisconsin revealed that $2.3M was recently stolen from election funds intended to support the re-election of President Trump. According to their statement, they are victims of a Business Email Compromise phishing attack that altered invoices to direct payments to accounts controlled by the threat actor. BEC attacks like this...
Eliminating the Threat of Look-alike Domains
Blog

Eliminating the Threat of Look-alike Domains

By Jessica Ryan on Tue, 10/20/2020
There are many ways look-alike domains can be used by threat actors. While business email compromise (BEC) and phishing sites are often top-of-mind for defenders, there are dozens of other uses for look-alike domains. This variation, as well as diverse registrar requirements for removal, can make mitigating look-alike domains a complex, burdensome, and often ineffective process. In this...
Digital Risk Protection vs. Threat Intelligence
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Digital Risk Protection vs. Threat Intelligence

By Jessica Ryan on Fri, 10/09/2020
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...
APWG: SSL Certificates No Longer Indication of Safe Browsing
Blog

APWG: SSL Certificates No Longer Indication of Safe Browsing

Mon, 09/28/2020
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...
Royal Ripper: Multi-Stage Phishing Attack Adapts to Victim Input
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Royal Ripper: Multi-Stage Phishing Attack Adapts to Victim Input

By Jessica Ryan on Thu, 09/24/2020
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...
Navigating Social Media Threats : A Digital Risk Protection Playbook
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Navigating Social Media Threats : A Digital Risk Protection Playbook

By Jessica Ryan on Wed, 09/02/2020
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,...
Gartner Releases Emerging Tech Report: Critical Insights into Digital Risk Protection
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Gartner Releases Emerging Tech Report: Critical Insights into Digital Risk Protection

By Jessica Ryan on Tue, 08/04/2020
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:...