Hedge Fund Loses $1.5 Million to Spearphishers

eSentire is reporting that a medium sized hedge fund with less than $1 billion under management was  spearphished.  The attackers were able to gain access to the CFO's wire transfer capabilities. Using the wire transfer tools, the attackers made several small transfers to accounts in China, Russia and Turkey aggregating $1.5 million.  How did they pull it off?  The bait was probably an email instructing the victim to check their voicemail messages. This unfortunate theft was triggered by employees who were tricked by deceptive emails. Yet again,  we see that email is an ideal medium for attackers to deceive users into compromising systems.  Every [...]

2017-01-07T17:35:15-05:00July 30th, 2014|Cybersecurity - General, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Spearphishing Takes Down Boeing

On July 12, 2014 the Financial Times broke the story of the arrest of Su Bin, a Chinese national living in Canada, for cyberespionage. Bin is accused of computer crimes related to the C-17 transport as well as the F-22 and F-35 fighter planes. As interesting as the press accounts are, they pale in comparison to the  charging document itself.   The affidavit of FBI Special Agent Noel A. Neeman details the methods used by cyberspies to infiltrate targeted organizations and evade detection.  The affidavit provides a rare glimpse into the details of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attack. This is [...]

2017-01-07T17:35:15-05:00July 16th, 2014|Cybersecurity - General, SP Guard, spear phishing|

Email – The Cockroach of the Internet Which Refuses to Die

In For Email Newsletters, a Death Greatly Exaggerated, David Carr of the New York Times writes about the resilience of email as a means of communication.  Carr writes: An email newsletter generally shows up in your inbox because you asked for it and it includes links to content you have deemed relevant. In other words, it’s important content you want in list form, which seems like a suddenly modern approach... It makes sense. My personal digital hierarchy, which I assume is fairly common, goes like this: email first, because it is for and about me; social media next, because it is [...]

2017-01-07T17:35:15-05:00July 3rd, 2014|Consumers and Email, Email Marketing|