The PhishLabs Blog

Today, social media is a daily medium for communication for much of the modern world, and adoption only continues to grow. Because of this, much like how threat actors started to target mobile users, they have begun to abuse social media, too.

As the manager of a security awareness team, whose primary goal is to educate users on how to spot phishing attacks, I often get asked, “can you make the phishing simulations look like real-world phish?”

This is when I show people what real-world phishing attacks look like.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are the most costly and effective forms of phishing. In most cases, these attacks use highly research social engineering to go after the top brass in a company with a motive of stealing corporate dollars or breaching their network.

Although computer-based training has been on the scene for over two decades, it is only recently that learning professionals have begun to optimize it. Often these courses present hours of content in a single learning experience.

While the flexibility of computer-based training offers convenience, learners are often overloaded and overwhelmed by the amount of information presented to them.

Business Email Compromise attacks are some of the most costly and vicious forms of phishing. Unlike the standard pray and spray approaches to phishing, they take a great deal of research and personalization to persuade a victim to hand over their credentials or wire them funds. This week we’re taking a closer look at how invoice scams work, just one of the many sub-types of BEC or spearphishing attacks.

Everyone will at some point see a standard phishing email. Be it the 409 Scam (Nigerian Prince) or even a fake password reset, these are pretty easy to spot, and most people delete it without flinching. However, for the select few who have been on the receiving end of a spear phish, it’s often a more memorable experience.

This week, the Department of Justice for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced the final of three sentences to be carried out by cybercriminals that plead guilty to carrying out phishing campaigns involving vishing and SMiShing. I’m proud to say that the apprehension and conviction of these criminals was supported in part by intelligence PhishLabs provided in cooperation with federal law enforcement officials.

Business email compromise (BEC) attacks are among the most effective forms of phishing in our modern world. Regardless of the technology in place, the social engineering involved easily will bypass it and can trick even trained users.

In our continued expansion and exploration of data from this year’s annual Phishing Trends and Intelligence report it’s time to take a closer look into free hosts. More specifically, the free hosts and domains that threat actors abuse in order to further distribute phishing attacks. While phishing sites that abuse free hosts don’t make up the majority, the use of them is increasing dramatically.

Our team is happy to announce that we have been named a Best Place to Work by SC Biz News in partnership with the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce and Best Companies Group.

This is the fourth consecutive year that we have been named to the list. The 2019 list is made up of 75 companies, and the full ranking is expected to be announced on August 1 of this year.