SMS-based phishing attacks are nothing new. They’ve been around in one form or another since the technology became mainstream in the mid-90s, and more so since the introduction of smartphones a decade and a half ago. However, in their latest incarnation, AKA Smishing, such attacks are progressively executed on a scale never seen before. In the last couple of months, Cyberint has seen an increase of SMS phishing attacks targeting the customers of retail companies.

Ofwat, the water services regulator for England and Wales, has revealed that it has received over 20,000 spam and phishing emails so far this year. The Water Services Regulation Authority (better known as Ofwat) which is the government department responsible for regulating the privatised water and sewage industry in England and Wales, said it had received 21,486 malicious emails so far this year – with 5,149 classified as phishing attacks.

Hallowe’en is still months away, but Frankenstein is out trick-or-treating even as you read this, and the operative word here is “trick”. Payment fraud criminals continue playing their games with financial institutions’ (FIs) customers and online merchants.

As guardians of valuable monetary assets and highly sensitive data, financial institutions are the perfect target for cybercriminals. According to IBM, the financial services sector was the number one target of cyberattacks in 2020 among all industries. This means these organizations continue to be challenged and invest heavily in both people and technology to make sure they can withstand attacks of any type.

Protecting your applications from abuse of functionality requires understanding which application features and workflows may be misused as well as the ability to quickly identify potential threats to your services. This visibility is particularly critical in cases where an adversary finds and exploits a vulnerability—such as inadequate authentication controls—to commit fraud.