The PhishLabs Blog

Most phishing campaigns attempt to take over accounts by tricking the victim into divulging their credentials. PhishLabs has uncovered a previously unseen tactic by attackers that uses a malicious Microsoft Office 365 App to gain access to a victim’s account without requiring them to give up their credentials to the attackers.

Topics: Email Incident Response, Office 365

Malicious domains are attributed to a wide variety of cyber attacks capable of undermining a brand’s credibility. A spoofed domain is easy and quick to create, and can act as the catalyst for malicious email campaigns and phishing sites. In order to detect and action domain threats targeting your organization, security teams need to implement mature and progressive processes for collection and curation.

Topics: Domain Threats Playbook, Domains

Threat actors are leveraging stolen data to enhance ransomware attacks. Data leaks and ransomware - once considered two distinct threats - are overlapping into a hybrid tactic known as double extortion. While traditional ransomware attacks deny access to valuable systems and data, double extortion threatens to leak sensitive data if the ransom is not paid. 

Topics: Ransomware, TrickBot, Ryuk

The life of a phishing site is brief, but impactful. A study published earlier this year found the average time span between the first and last victim of a phishing attack is just 21 hours.  The same study observed the average phishing site shows up in industry blocklist feeds nearly 9 hours after the first victim visit. By that time, most of the damage is done. 

Topics: Phishing, Digital Risk Protection

 

With Election Day just around the corner, the Republican Party of Wisconsin  revealed that $2.3M was recently stolen from election funds intended to support the re-election of President Trump.  According to their statement, they are victims of a Business Email Compromise phishing attack that altered invoices to direct payments to accounts controlled by the threat actor.

 

Topics: Spear Phishing, BEC, Election 2020

PhishLabs is monitoring a threat actor group that has set up fraudulent hosting companies with leased IP space from a legitimate reseller. They are using this infrastructure for bulletproof hosting services as well as to carry out their own phishing attacks. The group, which is based in Indonesia, has been dubbed Planetary Reef. 

Topics: Domains

There are many ways look-alike domains can be used by threat actors. While business email compromise (BEC) and phishing sites are often top-of-mind for defenders, there are dozens of other uses for look-alike domains. This variation, as well as diverse registrar requirements for removal, can make mitigating look-alike domains a complex, burdensome, and often ineffective process.

 

In this post, we examine steps to mitigate the internal and external risk posed by look-alike domains. 

Topics: Domain Threats Playbook, Domains