Because email remains the most ubiquitous form of business communication, it continues to be a favorite attack vector for cybercriminals. Email has always been vulnerable because it was not originally designed with security or privacy in mind. As a result, email security vendors emerged to protect this critical communication channel. In the early days, many vendors used signature or reputation...

Criminals are capitalizing on the urgency behind gift-giving celebrations such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and Hanukkah. Counterfeit activity has grown more than 50% from September through November, with a 27% increase over the course of November alone, according to Fortra’s PhishLabs. These threats are impersonating brands on social media and the open web to target consumers with...

The broad scope of counterfeit campaigns and unclear boundaries of abuse make it challenging to successfully mitigate online threats targeting retail brands. There is a fine line between infringement and fair use of publicly made materials, as well as immeasurable online environments where counterfeit campaigns may live and grow. Additionally, bad actors are continuously modifying attack...

Retail brands are increasingly targeted with fraudulent advertisements, fake social accounts, and falsely branded websites. These multipronged counterfeit campaigns redirect sales and compromise consumer data using brand recognition, the same component critical to driving sales within the retail industry. The massive expansion of ecommerce and online consumer-to-retail interaction creates a...

Cloned and spoofed mobile applications can damage a brand’s reputation and compromise user data. Fake mobile apps are widely available on both third-party and official app stores and rely heavily on brand impersonation to build trust and drive downloads. Many mobile users lack the security posture normally practiced on desktops, leaving devices vulnerable to compromise. Fake Apps Cloned Mobile...

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...

PhishLabs is monitoring the increasing number of mobile applications targeted by the relatively new Alien Mobile Banking Trojan. Alien, a fork of Cerberus, continues to evade Google's malware detection and is targeting a broad spectrum of both financial and non-financial apps. So far, Alien has been connected with 87 new brands previously not targeted by Cerberus. Cerberus versus Alien...

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...

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...

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...

Threat actors continue using COVID-19 fears to exploit individuals on a variety of channels. Today we are taking a look at two new, related SMS lures. 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 first...

Recently we highlighted one of the most common evasion techniques employed by threat actors in order to keep a phishing site online: geoblocking, or blocking by location. However, many other techniques exist, some that are more subtle and make it more difficult for unwanted visitors to view a site. One such method is used to thwart unintended parties - bots, analysts, hosting providers, etc. -...

Every day our teams analyze millions of phish across the web, detected through emails, social media, text messages, and most other common digital vectors. Many phishing sites are easy to review and analyze. However, some threat actors that we track take steps to hide their attacks from people other than their intended victims. This is a defense mechanism that makes it harder to analyze their...

Every second, 5,787 tweets are published. Every minute, 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. These are just two of the more popular social networks, and among these data points are the occasional references to a specific organization, its brands, and even customers or employees. For many, these brands have a marketing, communications, or even customer service team dedicated to...

Each year new phishing techniques result in more attacks successfully landing in user inboxes. In most cases, threat actors are no different than anyone else, and follow the hottest trends in an effort to be more relevant. During tax season they may push out tax scams, during elections they may push bogus political-inspired healthcare emails, and there are even Game of Thrones inspired...

As a marketer I am all too familiar with how social media can benefit or damage a brand. On the one hand, social media offers an easy and (sometimes) free way to communicate with customers, prospects, and partners that many brands have used to great advantage. But on the other hand, it's yet another source of potential threats to an organization's infrastructure and reputation. And for the...

Ransomware. The word strikes fear into the hearts of hospital administrators, local government officers, and small business owners everywhere. After exploding in 2016, ransomware has been covered extensively by media outlets and security experts, to the point where most organizations have started to take at least some action to mitigate their exposure. But have these efforts had any impact?...