As email threats are increasing in popularity, what can you do to protect your business or personal account from attack?
Email is such an integral part of everyday life we tend to ignore, or simply be unaware, that it is the biggest single threat to cybersecurity. Yet almost all cybercrime is either email-based, or employs email as part of the process.
Criminals play on our emotions, especially concern, fear, love, trust and greed, seasoned with a twist of urgency. For every national or international disaster, there will be a thousand criminals trying to exploit it. Consider the Coronavirus spread. Within days of a serious outbreak in Italy, 10% of all Italian organizations had been targeted by a phishing email that (translated) said, “Due to the number of cases of coronavirus infection that have been documented in your area, the World Health Organization has prepared a document that includes all the necessary precautions against coronavirus infection. We strongly recommend that you read the document attached to this message.”
This is an example of standard spray and pray phishing – the attack is simply targeted at as many people as possible in the knowledge that some will be tricked. It should not be confused with spear-phishing where a single person or small related group of people are targeted in a victim-focused fashion.
The emotions being played in the Coronavirus phish are concern/fear, trust (in the World Health Organization), and urgency (protect yourself before it is too late). The attached and appealing document was titled, “Coronavirus: Important information about precautions”. Reading it leads to the Ostap Trojan-Downloader which has been used elsewhere to download the TrickBot banking trojan.
Coronavirus is being u ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
