The Weekly Top 3 are the three most relevant news stories for the week that are related to phishing scams reported in the media, security blogs and security magazines on the internet. This week, we look at phishing scams related to hackers impersonating IT staff, Amazon and a botnet named RAMNIT.
Earlier this week Security experts were informed that there was a phishing campaign targeting users of the popular online retailer, Amazon. This scam was aiming to harvest customer's login information for the online shopping service. The phishing e-mail would state that it came from the customer service department and it would ask the victim to verify a ticket number. The link within this malicious e-mail would then direct the victims to a fake login page for Amazon, which would used to obtain the login credentials. The cyber criminals would then use these credentials to make purchases or obtain further information on the victim. Click the link below to read more.
Researchers at FireEye have suggested that hackers are starting to use a common social engineering tactic, which involves impersonating IT staff with the purpose of exploiting a company's greatest asset and greatest weakness, its employees. Fire Eye has observed that hackers are impersonating IT staff in 78 percent of these phishing schemes, which in comparison is an increase to last year's observation of 44 percent. Additionally, the increase in outsourcing services and lack of two-factor authentication on internal systems also increases the success of a data breach. Click the link below to read more.
European Cybercrime police have successfully taken down the RAMNIT botnet, which was responsible for infecting 3.2 million computers worldwide. This malware had spread through links embedded in phishing e-mails and in posts on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The malware allowed hackers to access computers for the purpose of stealing passwords, personal data and/or launch illegal attacks on websites. Click on the link below to read more.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/25/europol_shuts_down_ramnit_botnet_hampshire/
APHC