An old trick is coming back and working. It is a wire fraud scheme targeted at homeowners instead of businesses, and it is happening at an alarming rate. Here’s how it works: An individual is in the process of purchasing a home. Most of the communication in real estate transactions these days is done via … Continue Reading
The month of August saw two federal criminal convictions of individuals involved in significant cyberattacks. In Boston, a federal jury convicted Martin Gottesfeld of one count of conspiracy to intentionally damage a protected computer and one count of intentional damage to protected computers. The charges resulted from 2014 Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks on … Continue Reading
In a lawsuit against its insurance company requesting reimbursement for close to $2.4 million from two different hacking incidents, National Bank of Blacksburg detailed the intrusions, which are instructive of a sophisticated scheme against the financial services industry. According to the lawsuit, the first theft took place on Memorial Day weekend of 2016. In that … Continue Reading
Inogen, which manufactures portable oxygen devices, has alerted the Securities and Exchange Commission in a recent filing that it is notifying 30,000 individuals that their personal information was compromised when a hacker gained access to one of its employees’ email accounts through a phishing scheme. The incident illustrates how the manufacturing sector is continuing to … Continue Reading
Late last week, a joint statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that the Russian government has been behind an ongoing targeted campaign to penetrate U.S. power plants and the electric grid. Of course, this fact has been well known and has been reported on repeatedly in the … Continue Reading
In a recent Public Service Announcement dated February 21, 2018 entitled “Increase in W-2 Phishing Campaigns,” the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued another alert about an increase in phishing campaigns since the beginning of 2018. According to the FBI, “IRS’s Online Fraud Detection & Prevention (OFDP), which monitors for suspected IRS-related phishing emails, observed … Continue Reading
On January 30, 2018, EDUCAUSE, a higher education technology association, submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of Education describing concerns that it had with the Federal Student Aid (“FSA”) ability to protect federal student financial aid data. EDUCAUSE’s members include IT professionals from over 1,800 colleges and universities as well as other organizations. First, … Continue Reading
According to a Proofpoint study that analyzed 160 billion emails delivered to 2,400 global companies at the end of 2017, 88.8 percent of organizations were targeted by at least one email phishing attack over the past year. This is an increase over its 2016 report conclusion of 75 percent. In addition, more identities were spoofed … Continue Reading
Lazarus, the well-known hacking group responsible for the WannaCry ransomware attack from last year, as well as the attack on the Bangladesh Central Bank and Sony, is now targeting global financial firms and Bitcoin adopters with a phishing campaign dubbed “HaoBao.” The phishing campaign was discovered by McAfee Labs in mid-January. The way it works … Continue Reading
It is a myth that employees hate training and education. I have seen it with my own eyes. It is very exciting to watch an audience visibly cover their mouths when real life stories are told about cyber-attacks and phishing incidents that employees’ conduct cause because they are working too fast, not paying attention to … Continue Reading
It is well known that hackers and fraudsters surf Facebook to find individuals who have not protected their information through Facebook’s privacy settings. People put a lot of information on Facebook that is very personal and can give criminals detailed leads on how to launch successful campaigns against unsuspecting victims. Less publicized is the fact … Continue Reading
Beazley has published a report outlining data breaches in the first nine months of 2017. The report notes that the highest cause of a data breach in 2017 so far are unintended disclosures, which accounted for 41 percent of all incidents. Beazley stated: “We urge organizations not to ignore this significant risk and to invest … Continue Reading
Hackers working on behalf of the Iranian government have been targeting the aviation and petrochemical industries in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea since 2013, according to a report released by FireEye last week. According to the report, APT33, a hacking group working for the Iranian government, have sent phishing emails to aviation … Continue Reading
Vevo announced this week that it experienced an intrusion into its servers by the hacking collective OurMine, self-described as a white hat organization that informs individuals and organizations of potential security vulnerabilities. When OurMine reached out to Vevo to inform it of a vulnerability, a Vevo employee dismissed the claim and told OurMine that they … Continue Reading
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued a warning alerting the public to a new email phishing scam that looks like a joint notice from the IRS and FBI about new tax laws. The phishing email uses the emblems of both agencies, and asks recipients to download an FBI questionnaire related to “changes of tax … Continue Reading
A cyber-attack against–Bithumb–one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges and one of the five largest in the world—has reaped access to the data of 30,000 users and drained their accounts in the process. Bithumb is one of the biggest ethereum exchanges by volume in South Korea, representing more than 44 percent of trading in that … Continue Reading
Last month, Southern Oregon University (SOU) announced that it was the victim of a $1.9 million phishing scheme. SOU received an email purportedly from their contractor, Anderson Construction, requesting the April payment for construction on the McNeal Pavilion and Student Recreation Center. An employee then sent funds to a bank account that the contractor did … Continue Reading
Social networking app Wishbone, which is used primarily by teenage girls to vote on various teenage type quizzes, like favorite entertainers or fashion, has been hacked. The intruders have reportedly gained access to users’ (again, primarily female minors) names, unique email addresses and mobile telephone numbers. Not just a few, either. The data compromised included … Continue Reading
Showing no signs of letting up on enforcement actions, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) late last week settled an investigation against Metro Community Provider Network MCPN, a Colorado based federally qualified health center, for alleged HIPAA violations. The fine, a whopping $400,000 for the center, which provides health care services to low income patients, … Continue Reading
Another employee falls for a phishing attack. This time, it was an employee of the Washington University School of Medicine The employee received a phishing email on December 2, 2016, and fell for what looked like a real request, responded to it, which allowed access to employee email accounts, which included the health information of 80,000 … Continue Reading
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a report this week indicating that federal agencies experience almost 31,000 cyberincidents in 2016. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was responsible for 10 of 16 major incidents. These incidents resulted when personally identifiable information was able to be downloaded onto removable media. Despite the dismal number of … Continue Reading
On March 6, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released tips and a video to businesses that have been impersonated by Phishing schemes. The guidance, entitled “Has a phishing scam hooked your company’s good name?” provides businesses with several tips to respond to being impersonated through a phishing scheme. The tips include: Notify and alert customers … Continue Reading
W-2 phishing schemes continue to be a problem for companies in every industry. Last week, American Senior Communities based in Indiana announced that one of its employees was scammed through a phishing email and thereafter sent over 17,000 employees’ W-2 forms to the fraudulent emailer. Unfortunately, the scam was not discovered until a month after … Continue Reading
We continue to see all industries hit with W2 phishing scams, including the health care industry. Citizens Memorial Hospital, located in Bolivar, Missouri, was hit with the scam when one of its employees believed that an email received from another employee was legitimate, and sent the W2s of its employees from 2016 to a hacker. … Continue Reading
