The PhishLabs Blog

In order to increase the lifespan of their campaigns, most threat actors implement evasion techniques to keep their activity from being detected by defenders and their intelligence tools. In this blog post, we'll take a look at how geoblocking by IP is used.

Heading to RSA in a few weeks? If you are, be sure to spend some time with PhishLabs while you're there. This year we are hosting several events for security leaders and practitioners. Come relax with a glass of quality bourbon, get a break from the crowds, catch up with old friends, and make some new ones.

In the past few weeks, our team highlighted how social media is abused by threat actors seeking to steal credentials and to administer phishing attacks. While these are both two of the most prominent cybersecurity threats distributed through social media, there are some other tactics in play, too.

Social media account compromise is nothing new. If you haven’t had an account hacked in the past, most of us know someone who has. According to a study by the University of Phoenix, almost two-thirds of US adults have had at least one social media account hacked. Another report found that 53% of social media logins are fraudulent.

On August 30, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey became the most notable victim of one of the fastest-growing cyber threats: SIM Swapping. SIM Swap Attacks are increasing because they only require social engineering and access to a SIM card, which makes it another form of phishing.

On a daily basis, most people will use some form of social media. From checking photos of your friends and pets, to communicating with coworkers and loved ones, social media is a large part of the connected world.

Unfortunately, this also means that the more social media is used, the more likely that threat actors will try to exploit it. 

Every day our teams analyze millions of phish across the web, emails, social media, mobile, 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.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks have plagued organizations all over the world for almost a decade. In fact, the phishing threat has become so pervasive and effective for threat actors that the reported losses to date have already hit more than $26 billion. 

Stakeholders expect to see a return on their investment in training. In some cases though, they struggle to conceptualize the best way to evaluate the effectiveness of their security awareness training. They are in good company. Training evaluations can be complex, expensive, elusive, and baffles even seasoned pros.

Today’s marketing organization uses countless SaaS-based tools and platforms that live outside of an organization’s network. As their digital footprint grows, so does their potential for digital risks targeting their enterprise, brands, and customers. Even if they don’t join the latest social media platform, in most cases there are not proper security systems in place to ensure a person or brand is even verified. They just can’t scale with pesky things like security and privacy controls in place.