Phishing Payloads

-

 Phishing Payloads 

One of the biggest cybercrimes ever — with the highest number of defendants charged for the same crime — was what the FBI called Operation Phish Phry. The attack sparked a multinational phishing investigation after targeting hundreds of bank and credit card customers, all of whom received emails with links to fake, but authentic-looking, financial websites. On the site, targets were asked to enter their account numbers and passwords into fraudulent forms.

What you need to know: Despite its simplicity, phishing remains the most pervasive and dangerous cyberthreat. In fact, research shows that as many as 91% of all successful attacks are initiated via a phishing email. These emails use fraudulent domains, email scraping techniques, familiar contact names inserted as senders, and other tactics to lure targets into clicking a malicious link, opening an attachment with a nefarious payload, or entering sensitive personal information that perpetrators may intercept. The “payload” refers to the transmitted data that is the intended message. Headers and metadata are only sent to enable the delivery of the payload to the correct person.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Compromised Credentials

-
 Compromised Credentials  In 2020, Marriott International suffered a massive data breach as a result of a compromised credentials attack. This breach compromised the accounts of 5.2 million Marriott customers, exposing their contact information, gender, date of birth and loyalty account information. The attacker used the login credentials of two Marriott employees, presumably obtained through a mix of phishing and credential stuffing, to collect Marriott customers’ information for an entire month before raising suspicion. What you need to know: Most people still use single-factor authentication to identify themselves (a pretty big no-no in the cybersecurity space). And while stricter password requirements are starting to be enforced (like character length, a combination of symbols and numbers, and renewal intervals), end users still repeat credentials across accounts, platforms and applications, failing to update them periodically. This type of approach makes it easier for adv...
Read more

SQL Injection

-
 SQL Injection  Structured Query Language, or SQL (sometimes pronounced “sequel”), is the standard programming language used to communicate with relational databases — systems that support every data-driven website and application on the internet. An attacker can take advantage of this (very common) system by entering a specific SQL query into the form (injecting it into the database), at which point the hacker can access the database, network and servers. And SQL injection attacks continue to be a popular attack method. As recently as August of 2020, the Freepik Company disclosed a data breach impacting the logins of more than eight million users resulting from an SQL injection in a global database of customizable icons, which allowed the hackers to access and ultimately steal user login and personal information. What you need to know: SQL injection is a type of injection attack used to manipulate or destroy databases using malicious SQL statements. SQL statements control the...
Read more