So here it is… the first one you've received. Everything has been building up to this. You spent days preparing the business case, weeks designing the training program… and it's finally paid off. The first user-reported phishing email has hit your inbox. Now… what should you do with it? Time is of the Essence Reported phishing emails are good for a lot of reasons. For starters, they can...

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 over the past four and...

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, call forwarding, and...

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 business account getting...

The push for more widespread adoption of HTTPS has been in full-force this year as a way to increase the number of websites that securely transmit information on the Internet. In January, both Chrome and Firefox browsers began alerting users whenever sensitive information, such as passwords or credit card information, was entered on a non-HTTPS web page. In October, Google took this a step...

'Tis the season for shopping, time spent with friends and family, and preparations to celebrate the holidays. As most of us plan for the coming season, cyber criminals are looking for opportunities to catch victims off guard and steal valuable personal information. People looking to supplement their gift-giving budget with a seasonal holiday job should take a close look at job listings before...

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, Linux, and Android...

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 and handling...

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 known as CEO scams....

Nation states. Hacktivists. Cyber criminals. There are so many players in the modern threat landscape it can be hard to keep up. And the number of threats? Practically too many to count. By the time you’ve secured your organization against password reuse, DDoS, and crimeware attacks, your resources are likely so diminished there’s no point even thinking about what else could be out there. ...

The fact that hackers are increasingly targeting mobile devices isn’t exactly a secret. And really, it’s not surprising either. After all, most of us are practically glued to our smartphones throughout the day. An SMS arrived? Better read it straight away. New email? Let me at it. Somebody I don’t care about updated their Facebook status? Great, let’s see what they’re up to. The...

When you’re attempting to mitigate the risk of phishing, threat intelligence plays a vital role. After all, what better way to predict and intercept future phishing attacks than by analyzing past attacks for patterns and indicators? This post is the second in a series breaking down lessons learned from our recent consumer-focused phishing webinar. In the first post we covered the value of...

It’s a sobering moment. You work long and hard to prepare your users. You train them. You test them. And over time, you see amazing results. But then it happens. Just when you think your users are becoming rockstars at identifying phishing emails, threat actors throw a new tactic at you… and everybody falls for it. Of course, this isn’t a new story. Threat actors constantly update their...

The cyclical relationship between threat actors and security professionals begins with the creation of a new attack technique, followed by the discovery of that technique by the security community, and then a refashioning of the manner of attack or creation of another novel approach by threat actors. Phishers are always seeking better ways to entice victims into providing their personal and...

In recent months we’ve written a lot about security awareness and phishing awareness training. It’s an involved topic, clearly, and if you’ve taken away anything we hope it will be this: If you want real, measurable improvements you must test your employees. And when it comes to email security, that means phishing your employees on a regular basis. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into a...

Everybody knows phishing is costly to their organization. But how costly? Few organizations know for sure. Plenty of studies have claimed to calculate the cost of phishing, but the results are usually hard to swallow. For instance, does phishing cost your organization $1.6 million per incident? Or $3.7 million per year? Perhaps... but probably not. The issue with these figures is that they're...

Frustrating, isn’t it? It seems like no matter what you do, a few phishing emails always find their way into your users’inboxes. You’ve tweaked your spam filter, and you’re scanning every attachment… But nothing seems to work. Is it you? Are you making some glaring mistake? Probably not. We've discussed before why your users keep falling for phishing scams, and there's more to it. The...

We’ve all been there. That awful moment, when you realize it’s happened again. “Why do they never learn?” You ask yourself. “It really isn’t that hard!” Time and time again, your users click on malicious links and attachments in phishing emails, and it seems like no matter what you do to improve their awareness, it never gets any better. So why do they keep falling for phishing scams? Is it...