spear phishing

October 12, 2017

HEALTHCARE

Why cybersecurity in the workplace is everyone’s business

1 min read

“If Microsoft calls and asks you for your password…it’s not real, ” said Steve LeBlond, VP of Technology and CTO of Ochsner Health System, while speaking at our Digital Health Summit on October 3. “We [Information Technology] will never ask you to log us in.” Steve was talking about phishing attacks, one of the biggest […]

February 18, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Tax Time: Let the Phishing Begin

3 min read

This post was authored by Earl Carter and Craig Williams. With the April 15th US tax deadline only about 2 months away, a new wave of tax related phishing is underway. In this latest spear-phishing campaign, attackers are attempting to gain access to your system so that they can steal your banking and other online […]

July 14, 2014

SECURITY

Big Data: Observing a Phishing Attack Over Years

4 min read

Overview Phishing attacks use social engineering in an attempt to lure victims to fake websites. The websites could allow the attacker to retrieve sensitive or private information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details. Attacks of this kind have been around since 1995, evolving in sophistication in order to increase their success rate. Up until now, […]

July 8, 2014

SECURITY

Threat Spotlight: “A String of Paerls”, Part 2, Deep Dive

1 min read

This post has been coauthored by Joel Esler, Craig Williams, Richard Harman, Jaeson Schultz, and Douglas Goddard  In part one of our two part blog series on the “String of Paerls” threat, we showed an attack involving a spearphish message containing an attached malicious Word doc. We also described our methodology in grouping similar samples based on Indicators of Compromise: static and […]

June 30, 2014

SECURITY

Threat Spotlight: A String of ‘Paerls’, Part One

5 min read

This post was co-authored by Jaeson Schultz, Joel Esler, and Richard Harman.  Update 7-8-14: Part 2 can be found here This is part one in a two-part series due to the sheer amount of data we found on this threat and threat actor. This particular attack was a combined spearphishing and exploit attempt. As we’ve seen in the past, this […]

May 6, 2013

SECURITY

Watering Hole Attacks an Attractive Alternative to Spear Phishing

2 min read

“Watering Hole” attacks, as evidenced by the recent attack involving the U.S. Department of Labor, are becoming increasingly popular as alternatives to attacks such as Spear Phishing. In a “Watering Hole” attack, the attacker compromises a site likely to be visited by a particular target group, rather than attacking the target group directly. Eventually, someone from […]