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Generative AI will enable anyone to launch sophisticated phishing attacks that only Next-generation MFA devices can stop The least surprising headline from 2023 is that ransomware again set new records for a number of incidents and the damage inflicted. We saw new headlines every week, which included a who's-who of big-name organizations. If MGM, Johnson Controls, Chlorox, Hanes Brands, Caesars Palace, and so many others cannot stop the attacks, how will anyone else? Phishing-driven ransomware is the cyber threat that looms larger and more dangerous than all others. CISA and Cisco report that 90% of data breaches are the result of phishing attacks and monetary losses that exceed $10 billion in total. A report from Splunk revealed that 96 percent of companies fell victim to at least one phishing attack in the last 12 months and 83 percent suffered two or more. Protect your organization from phishing and ransomware by learning about the benefits of Next-Generation MFA. Download th

No fewer than 1,220 Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) phishing websites have been discovered as targeting popular online services like Instagram, Google, PayPal, Apple, Twitter, and LinkedIn with the goal of hijacking users' credentials and carrying out further follow-on attacks. The findings come from a  new study  undertaken by a group of researchers from Stony Brook University and Palo Alto Networks, who have demonstrated a new fingerprinting technique that makes it possible to identify MitM phishing kits in the wild by leveraging their intrinsic network-level properties, effectively automating the discovery and analysis of phishing websites. Dubbed " PHOCA " — named after the Latin word for "seals" — the tool not only facilitates the discovery of previously unseen MitM phishing toolkits, but also can be used to detect and isolate malicious requests coming from such servers. Phishing toolkits aim to  automate and streamline  the work required by attackers to cond

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Phishing attacks have become one of the business world's top cybersecurity concerns. These social engineering attacks have been rising over the years, with the most recent report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group coalition identifying over 266,000 active spoofed websites, which is nearly double the number detected during Q4 2018. Hackers have evolved their methods, from regular phishing attacks to spear phishing, where they use email messages disguised as coming from legitimate sources to dupe specific individuals. This is why the global spear phishing protection software market is estimated to reach $1.8 billion by 2025. However, conventional defenses can still fall short due to one particular weakness in the security perimeter – the human factor. Indeed, some 33 percent of 2019's data breaches involved humans falling victim to social engineering attacks. And given how sophisticated and creative the phishing perpetrators have been getting, it's easy to see h

Account credentials, a popular initial access vector, have become a valuable commodity in cybercrime. As a result, a single set of stolen credentials can put your organization's entire network at risk. According to the  2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report , external parties were responsible for  83 percent  of breaches that occurred between November 2021 and October 2022.  Forty-nine percent  of those breaches involved stolen credentials. How are threat actors compromising credentials? Social engineering is one of the  top five cybersecurity threats  in 2023. Phishing, which accounts for %of social engineering attempts, is the go-to method for stealing credentials. It's a relatively cheap tactic that yields results. As phishing and social engineering techniques become more sophisticated and the tools become more readily available, credential theft should become a top security concern for all organizations if it already isn't one. Phishing has evolved With phishing and s

A previously undocumented "phishing empire" has been linked to cyber attacks aimed at compromising Microsoft 365 business email accounts over the past six years. "The threat actor created a hidden underground market, named W3LL Store, that served a closed community of at least 500 threat actors who could purchase a custom phishing kit called W3LL Panel, designed to bypass MFA, as well as 16 other fully customized tools for business email compromise (BEC) attacks," Group-IB  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The phishing infrastructure is estimated to have targeted more than 56,000 corporate Microsoft 365 accounts and compromised at least 8,000 of them, primarily in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Germany, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy between October 2022 and July 2023, netting its operators $500,000 in illicit profits. Some of the prominent sectors infiltrated using the phishing solution include manufacturing, IT, consultin

Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed that a large-scale phishing campaign targeted over 10,000 organizations since September 2021 by hijacking Office 365's authentication process even on accounts secured with multi-factor authentication (MFA). "The attackers then used the stolen credentials and session cookies to access affected users' mailboxes and perform follow-on business email compromise (BEC) campaigns against other targets," the company's cybersecurity teams  reported . The intrusions entailed setting up adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing sites, wherein the attacker deploys a proxy server between a potential victim and the targeted website so that recipients of a phishing email are redirected to lookalike landing pages designed to capture credentials and MFA information. "The phishing page has two different Transport Layer Security (TLS) sessions — one with the target and another with the actual website the target wants to access," the company

Phishing attacks are steadily becoming more sophisticated, with cybercriminals investing in new ways of deceiving victims into revealing sensitive information or installing malicious software. One of the latest trends in phishing is the use of QR codes, CAPTCHAs, and steganography. See how they are carried out and learn to detect them. Quishing Quishing, a phishing technique resulting from the combination of "QR" and "phishing," has become a popular weapon for cybercriminals in 2023. By concealing malicious links within QR codes, attackers can evade traditional spam filters, which are primarily geared towards identifying text-based phishing attempts. The inability of many security tools to decipher the content of QR codes further makes this method a go-to choice for cybercriminals. An email containing a QR code with a malicious link Analyzing a QR code with an embedded malicious link in a safe environment is easy with  ANY.RUN : Simply open  this task  in th

As many as 37 individuals have been arrested as part of an international crackdown on a cybercrime service called  LabHost  that has been used by criminal actors to steal personal credentials from victims around the world. Described as one of the largest Phishing-as-a-Service ( PhaaS ) providers, LabHost offered phishing pages targeting banks, high-profile organizations, and other service providers located primarily in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. As part of the operation, codenamed PhishOFF and Nebulae (referring to the Australian arm of the probe), two LabHost users from Melbourne and Adelaide were arrested on April 17, with three others arrested and charged with drug-related offenses. "Australian offenders are allegedly among 10,000 cybercriminals globally who have used the platform, known as LabHost, to trick victims into providing their personal information, such as online banking logins, credit card details and passwords, through persistent phishing attacks sent via te

Phishing works no matter how hard a company tries to protect its customers or employees. Security researchers have been warning of a new phishing attack that cybercriminals and email scammers are using in the wild to bypass the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) mechanism implemented by widely used email services like Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft Office 365 is an all-in-solution for users that offers several different online services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and other Office Web Apps, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. On the top of these services, Microsoft also offers an artificial intelligence and machine learning powered security protection to help defend against potential phishing and other threats by going one level deep to scan the links in the email bodies to look for any blacklisted or suspicious domain. But as I said, phishers always find a way to bypass security protections in order to victimize users. Just over

A new, large-scale phishing campaign has been observed using adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) techniques to get around security protections and compromise enterprise email accounts. "It uses an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attack technique capable of bypassing multi-factor authentication," Zscaler researchers Sudeep Singh and Jagadeeswar Ramanukolanu  said  in a Tuesday report. "The campaign is specifically designed to reach end users in enterprises that use Microsoft's email services." Prominent targets include fintech, lending, insurance, energy, manufacturing, and federal credit union verticals located in the U.S., U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. This is not the first time such a phishing attack has come to light. Last month, Microsoft  disclosed  that over 10,000 organizations had been targeted since September 2021 by means of AitM techniques to breach accounts secured with multi-factor authentication (MFA). The ongoing campaign, effective June 2022,

Phishing incidents are on the rise. A report from IBM shows that phishing was the most popular attack vector in 2021, resulting in one in five employees falling victim to phishing hacking techniques. The Need for Security Awareness Training  Although technical solutions protect against phishing threats, no solution is 100% effective . Consequently, companies have no choice but to involve their employees in the fight against hackers. This is where security awareness training comes into play.  Security awareness training gives companies the confidence that their employees will execute the right response when they discover a phishing message in their inbox. As the saying goes, "knowledge is power," but the effectiveness of knowledge depends heavily on how it is delivered. When it comes to phishing attacks, simulations are among the most effective forms of training because the events in training simulations directly mimic how an employee would react in the event of an actu

DMARC  is a global standard for email authentication. It allows senders to verify that the email really comes from whom it claims to come from. This helps curb spam and phishing attacks, which are among the most prevalent cybercrimes of today. Gmail, Yahoo, and many other large email providers have implemented DMARC and praised its benefits in recent years. If your company's domain name is bankofamerica.com, you do not want a cyber attacker to be able to send emails under that domain. This puts your brand reputation at risk and could potentially spread financial malware. The DMARC standard prevents this by checking whether emails are sent from an expected IP address or domain. It specifies how domains can be contacted if there are authentication or migration issues and provides forensic information so senders can monitor email traffic and quarantine suspicious emails. What is a Phishing Attack? Phishing is an attempt by cybercriminals to trick victims into giving away sensitive