Anti Whaling Protection

What do United Airlines and footballer David Beckham have in common? Disastrous leaked emails. In these recent cases, the leaked emails appear to be legitimate, though Beckham claims some of the leaked emails were “doctored.” But how do we know that leaked email messages discussed in news stories and tabloid columns are actually authentic?

Cyber pirates have found easy prey in real estate brokers, title agents and estate attorneys. Their emails are a treasure trove of information about pending transactions involving large wire transfers. Real estate buyers, eager to close the deal, blindly trust the email they receive and the advisors with whom they correspond.

$100 Million IT Budget May Not Secure “The Human Factor” Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has joined a new club along with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Citigroup. Each has fallen victim to an email prankster who, posing as a colleague or friend, sent email messages to them and tricked them into responding. […]

Imposter Email Lures White House Staff Email Prankster Threatens National Security Why was the newly minted White House communications director, Scaramucci, fired? We don’t know for sure. But an examination of his emails would have shown that he spent the weekend responding to spear phishing emails purported to be sent from Reince Preibus, former White […]

Whaling is Flourishing, A $5 Billion Hacker Lottery Harpooning whales is (in most of the world) a thing of the past. This is good for the kind-hearted. But in the cyber world, harpooning “whales” is a thriving and fantastically profitable criminal profession.

Beware of Hollywood Sim Swappers, The New Posers Hollywood Sim Swappers are the New Posers. Your mobile phone is often the second key to your life. When you forget your password at key accounts like your email or bank, you may be prompted to enter a code that appears by text message to your phone. […]

The FBI Wants You to Stop Inadvertently Giving Criminals Money The FBI Elegantly Asks You to Stop Sending Money to Internet Criminals. We are now in the 16th annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a collaborative effort by the US Government and participating industry groups to educate all computer users enough so that they stop clicking […]

Whaling Can Be a Grusome Affair It’s an election year, so it should come as no surprise that Russian military hackers are ramping up their efforts to wreak havoc on US elections. The NY Times reported on Jan 15 that hackers from a shadowy intelligence unit called GRU have been trying to gain access to Burisma, the […]

Whaling Redux: Insurers Don’t Cover Whale Attacks Given the popularity of our piece on whaling last week, we thought we’d follow this up by looking back on a piece we ran in the early days of whaling about a fake CEO email that cost a company nearly half a million dollars (Tech Essentials recommended reading).

Whale Eats Shark. Whale Eats Nurse. Whale Eats $1.2mm Killer whales occasionally hunt sharks. When they do, it can be ugly. In a recent whaling attack (This is not a nature article. We are referring to the very tricky type of email “spear-phishing” impostor email attack), the poser sent an email to one of the […]