Posts exploring how attackers steal usernames, passwords, and authentication tokens through phishing, keylogging, brute force attacks, and credential stuffing. Includes actionable guidance on multi-factor authentication, password managers, and monitoring for compromised credentials.
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In January 2025, the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report team was already tracking a sharp rise in cloud-specific intrusions — a trend that accelerated throughout the year. By mid-2025, roughly 45% of all breaches involved cloud assets, up significantly from prior years. If your organization moved to the cloud and assumed
In March 2025, a finance director at a mid-sized manufacturing company wired $2.3 million to a bank account in Southeast Asia. The request came from what looked like the CEO's email — same signature, same tone, same thread about an acquisition they'd been discussing for weeks.
In March 2025, a mid-size logistics company in the Midwest lost $2.3 million after a single employee clicked a fake DocuSign link. The attacker harvested credentials, pivoted into the company's financial systems, and initiated wire transfers over a long weekend. The employee had never received phishing awareness
The Email That Cost One Company $37 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that phishing and its variants remained the number one reported cybercrime by volume, with over 298,000 complaints in a single year. But here's the part that should keep
In March 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that phishing remained the number one reported cybercrime for the fifth consecutive year. That stat alone should tell you everything about where threat actors are focusing their energy. But raw numbers don't teach your employees what
The Attack That Cost MGM Resorts $100 Million Started With a Phone Call In September 2023, a threat actor called the MGM Resorts IT help desk, impersonated an employee they found on LinkedIn, and talked their way into a password reset. Within hours, the attackers had deployed ransomware across MGM&
In January 2025, a finance director at a mid-sized manufacturing firm received an email from what appeared to be the company's CEO. The domain was off by one character. The request was urgent — wire $220,000 to a new vendor before end of day. She complied. The money
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor called Scattered Spider socially engineered its way past the help desk with a single phone call. But the reconnaissance that made that call possible? It started with spear phishing — targeted research, crafted messaging, and a specific human
In March 2025, the FBI's IC3 warned that Americans lost over $470 million to phishing and smishing schemes in the prior reporting year — and text-based attacks were growing faster than any other vector. I've personally triaged incidents where a single SMS message led to a six-figure
In March 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost over $12.5 billion to cybercrime in 2023 alone — and voice-based social engineering was one of the fastest-growing attack vectors. I've personally investigated cases where a single phone call cost an organization six
