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Look-alike Domain Mitigation: Breaking Down the Steps

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...
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The Anatomy of a Look-alike Domain Attack

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

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...
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APWG Q3 Report:Four Out of Five Criminals Prefer HTTPS

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...
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Easy to Deceive, Difficult to Detect, Impersonation Dominates Attacks

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...
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What is a Look-alike Domain?

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...
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Top 7 Use Cases for Digital Risk Protection

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...
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As Screen Time Skyrockets, So Does Threat of Fake Apps

App downloads fueled by COVID-19 lockdowns leapt to 37.5 billion in Q2 of this year, and collective global app usage is surging. Android users' screen time stands out significantly, with an increase of 25% above the weekly average from the previous year. As apps continue to be an integral part of how we conduct business and perform sensitive tasks, bad actors are using fake and unethical apps...
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How to Detect Look-alike Domain Registrations

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...
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$2.3M Stolen from Wisconsin GOP via BEC Attack

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...
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Eliminating the Threat of Look-alike Domains

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...
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What is Digital Risk Protection?

Digital Risk Protection is defined as an operational process that combines intelligence, detection, and response to mitigate attacks across the external digital risk landscape. Today's enterprise attack surface is not limited to the corporate network. In fact, the network is just a small slice. When it comes to deciding how and where to attack an enterprise, threat actors have ample opportunity...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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:...
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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...