Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

A 64-year-old man has pleaded guilty in a Texan court to charges of money laundering after a series of attacks that defrauded companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kenenty Hwan Kim (who sometimes went by the name Myung Kim) took advantage of a simple trick that has proven highly effective to fraudsters in recent years. The method of tricking businesses into handing over large amounts of money is known as Business Email Compromise (BEC), and comes in a variety of flavours.

Even with tough economic times, e-commerce is up 25% since the beginning of March. But, fraud has increased as well; according to Malwarebytes online credit card skimming has increased by 26% in March alone. In our April “Staff Picks for Splunk Security Reading” blog post, I referenced a story about an e-commerce site getting hacked with a “virtual card skimmer” (thanks Matthew Joseff for sharing this with me).

On Monday, May 4th, **FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), issued a warning to financial companies stating that a new email phishing campaign was doing the rounds. According to the regulator, the campaign is ongoing, widespread, and made to look as though the emails are coming from FINRA itself.

By this stage, everyone is familiar with the phrase ‘social distancing’ and what it means with regards to shopping trips and exercise outdoors. Social distancing, as we all know by now, was introduced to slow down or, more hopefully, stop the spread of Coronavirus. Many companies are taking steps to enable as many people as possible to work from home.

You don’t need us to tell you that fraud and financial crime is on the rise. A quick google search will give you endless stats to support this claim. Fraud losses are increasing as a percentage of revenue, and that direct impact on the bottom line isan area of laser focus for senior execs.

Security researchers observed that digital attackers are increasingly incorporating the reCaptcha API into their phishing campaigns. Barracuda Networks explained that malicious actors are starting to outfit their phishing attempts with reCaptcha walls so that they can shield their landing pages from automated URL analysis tools as well as add a sense of legitimacy to their operations. Some of these efforts have consisted of deploying a fake checkbox and form.

Email scams are nothing new, just about everyone has heard of that one Nigerian Prince for example, but there is another phishing scam doing the rounds and unsurprisingly it is Coronavirus flavoured. Gmail users alone are being targeted with up to 18 million phishing email hoaxes every single day. Of course, it doesn’t end there with ‘regular’ email users – healthcare professionals are being targeted also.

Slack is a cloud-based messaging platform that is commonly used in workplace communications. It is feature-rich, offering additional functionality such as video calling and screen sharing in addition to a marketplace containing thousands of third-party applications and add-ons. Slack Incoming Webhooks allow you to post messages from your applications to Slack.

A lot has changed in the past few weeks. And the percentage of us working from home (WFH) has increased tremendously. With increased WFH, we rely more on email communication, and this increases the opportunities for abuse by others. One thing that has stayed constant: bad people want to do bad things. As we have seen in the past, when one avenue of attack is restricted, the fraudsters redouble their efforts in other areas, and online fraud attempts are already increasing during our new normal.

Many in the digital security community are coming together to combat malicious actors during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global outbreak. One of the most visible of these new efforts is the COVID-19 CTI League. Made up of approximately 400 volunteers living in approximately 40 countries, the COVID-19 CTI League is working to block attackers from health care organizations and other medical facilities at this juncture.