ICANN is responsible for the coordination of maintenance and methodology of the internet domain names. On December 16, 2104, ICANN announced:
ICANN is investigating a recent intrusion into our systems. We believe a “spear phishing” attack was initiated in late November 2014. It involved email messages that were crafted to appear to come from our own domain being sent to members of our staff. The attack resulted in the compromise of the email credentials of several ICANN staff members.
We are reminded yet again that deceiving users with spearphishing is an excellent means to infiltrate systems. ICANN couldn’t stop phishing. Can you? Without SP Guard, personnel receiving spearphishing emails are left to guesswork in determining if the email should be trusted. That guesswork is made in a decision space that is manipulated by the attacker. With SP Guard installed, IT is able to provide personnel with real-time identification of trusted senders.
Users will decide which emails to trust. That decision can be guesswork or it can be guided by IT.