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Defeat the scammers by educating yourself and your employees about these increasingly common tax-related scams.

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Attacks targeting Swiss residents increased 10% last year, according to newly-released data that shows a growth in not just phishing attacks, but brand impersonation at purely a national level. The Swiss Federation’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) hosts a phishing site reporting tool where individuals and businesses can report suspicious websites and emails. They analyze and track reports, consolidating their findings annually into their Anti-Phishing Report.

Researchers at VIPRE Security observed a 276% increase in malware delivered by phishing between Q1 and Q4 of 2023. “Last year, our YARA rules caught between one and two million generic malware instances each quarter, with a nearly 20% jump in Q4,” VIPRE’s report says.

I recently read an article about a bright, sophisticated woman who fell victim to an unbelievable scam. By unbelievable, I mean most people reading or hearing about it could not believe it was successful. A group posing as an Amazon employee and various U.S. law enforcement agencies were able to convince a woman to take $50,000 out of her bank account in cash and hand it off to a complete stranger in the streets. It is a wild story and most of us would not be tricked into doing what happened to her.

Ten years ago, Congress passed the "CAN-SPAM Act" (also known as theYou-CAN-SPAM Act, since it defined legal spam and supersedes any stricter state-antispam laws). One of the provisions of the act is that there must be a legitimate physical address in the email. Spammers have long tried different tactics to get around this.

Just weeks after Trustwave SpiderLabs reported on the Greatness phishing-as-a-service (PaaS) framework, SpiderLabs’ Email Security team is tracking another PaaS called Tycoon Group. The team found Tycoon Group during a regular investigation into a phishing incident, and its distinctive method of communication to its phishing server convinced the team to further explore this active PaaS operation.

Numerous state-sponsored threat actors frequently launched spear phishing attacks against European Union entities last year, according to a new report from the EU’s Emergency Response Team (CERT-EU). “In 2023, spear phishing remained the predominant initial access method for state-sponsored and cybercrime groups seeking to infiltrate target networks,” the report says.