Fraud | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

For a long time, the cybersecurity industry has framed social engineering as a psychological problem. We treat it as a battle of wits between a charismatic con artist and an unsuspecting employee. The prevailing wisdom says that if we just train our people to better identify scams or tear down malicious infrastructure slightly faster, we can stay ahead of scammers. But looking at the threat landscape from a purely threat-intelligence perspective tells us something entirely different: Modern social engineering is more than a psychological game. It's a highly optimized, industrialized deception economy. Attackers run campaigns like hyper-efficient businesses. They have Customer Acquisition Costs, operational budgets, and strict Return on Investment (ROI) targets. This is the part the industry doesn't like to sit with: If we want to truly break the social engineering attack chain , we have to stop focusing exclusively on building higher walls or executing reactive takedowns...

Government impersonation scams have evolved into a large, highly coordinated fraud ecosystem targeting citizens across the globe. CTM360 's latest threat intelligence research analyzes a widespread campaign, referred to as GovTrap, that demonstrates how attackers systematically exploit public trust in government institutions through thousands of fraudulent digital platforms. Unlike traditional phishing attacks that rely on simple deceptions, GovTrap campaigns replicate entire government service environments. These fraudulent platforms mimic official portals with high accuracy, including branding, language, workflows, and service structures. From tax portals and licensing systems to fine payment services, each fake site is designed to appear legitimate while functioning as part of a broader, scalable fraud operation. Read the full report here:  https://www.ctm360.com/reports/government-impersonation-phishing-govtrap-scams Scale and Targeting Patterns CTM360 identified mo...