In terms of cyber-attack vectors, spoofing is exactly what it sounds like. This term embraces a series of techniques aimed at masquerading an attacker or electronic device as someone or something else to gain the victim’s confidence. Whether it is used to deceive a user or to manipulate a computer system, this multi-pronged phenomenon is often at the core of social engineering hoaxes in general and phishing campaigns in particular.
The government of Puerto Rico has publicly announced that its Industrial Development Company has fallen victim to an email phishing scam. The government-owned corporation transferred $2.6 million to a fraudulent account after reportedly receiving an email that alleged a change to a bank account tied to remittance payments. The transfer was made on January 17, 2019, but officials only found out about the incident earlier this week.
As if Puerto Rico wasn’t having a hard enough time as it attempts to recover from a recession, the damage caused by devastating hurricanes in recent years, and a damaging earthquake last month, it now finds itself being exploited by cybercriminals. According to media reports, the government of the US island territory has lost more than US $2.6 million after falling for the type of email scam that has plagued companies and organisations around the world.
Up until now, some of PayPal users’ greatest fears in terms of cybersecurity were phishing scams aimed at obtaining their login credentials. In January of this year, PayPal confirmed a high-severity bug affecting the login form, with PayPal security investigator, Alex Birsan, finding a javascript file with what looked like a CSRF token and a session ID – which makes login information vulnerable to attackers.
The threats from data theft and fraud will continue to be a significant concern for all corporate entities in 2020. eCommerce sales, for example, are expected to reach almost one trillion dollars in the next three years, creating a growing opportunity for attackers to capitalize on fraud. A Juniper Research Report regarding online payment fraud trends estimated that digital card, not present fraud (CNP), one of several fraud categories, will reach $130 billion by 2023.
In an early January post by Mohamed Dabo of Cards International, the CEO of INETCO and the Director of Barclaycard Payment Solutions shared their views on key payment fraud and security issues that will dominate the payments landscape in 2020. Both alluded to the delicate balance between delivering an amazing customer experience, meeting compliance such as the Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) legislation, and trying to keep one step ahead of the fraudsters.
Email security refers to various cybersecurity measures to secure the access and content of an email account or service. Proper email security can protect sensitive information in email communications, prevent phishing attacks, spear phishing and email spoofing and protect against unauthorized access, loss or compromise of one or more email addresses.
