Tag

Credential Theft

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.

posts

Phishing

Phishing Attacks in 2021: What Actually Works to Stop Them

36% of All Breaches Start With a Phishing Email The 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report made something painfully clear: phishing was involved in 36% of all confirmed data breaches — up from 25% the year before. That's not a trend. That's an escalation. And if your

Carl B. Johnson Aug 18, 2021 7 min read
Fake Mail

Fake Mail: How to Spot and Stop Phishing Attacks

91% of Cyberattacks Start With Fake Mail That's not a guess. The Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report confirmed that phishing was present in 36% of breaches — up from 25% the year before. And when you broaden the lens to include all forms of social engineering delivered through

Carl B. Johnson Aug 18, 2021 7 min read
Vishing

FBI Warning on Vishing and Smishing: What to Do Now

In January 2020, the FBI and CISA issued a joint advisory warning organizations about a wave of vishing attacks targeting remote workers. By mid-2021, the problem has only gotten worse. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported over 240,000 phishing, vishing, and smishing complaints in 2020

Carl B. Johnson Aug 18, 2021 7 min read
Phishing Scams

What Is a Phishing Scam? Anatomy of the #1 Cyber Threat

In July 2021, a single phishing email gave attackers access to an employee's credentials at a Florida-based managed service provider, ultimately cascading into the massive Kaseya VSA supply-chain ransomware attack that hit over 1,500 businesses worldwide. One email. One click. Billions in damages. If you've

Carl B. Johnson Aug 18, 2021 7 min read
Fake Emails

Fake Emails: How to Spot Them Before They Cost You

In March 2021, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Business Email Compromise — the sophisticated cousin of fake emails — caused over $1.8 billion in losses during 2020 alone. That made it the costliest category of cybercrime they tracked. Not ransomware. Not credit card fraud. Fake emails

Carl B. Johnson Aug 15, 2021 7 min read
FakeEmail

FakeEmail Attacks: How Spoofed Messages Breach Networks

The FakeEmail That Cost One Company $75 Million In 2020, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — attacks built on fakeemail techniques — generated over $1.8 billion in losses in a single year. That made it the costliest category of cybercrime, beating ransomware by

Carl B. Johnson Aug 15, 2021 7 min read
PayPal Phishing Attacks

PayPal Phishing Attacks: How to Spot and Stop Them

In January 2021, a wave of PayPal phishing attacks hit inboxes so convincingly that even security-savvy professionals did a double take. The emails replicated PayPal's branding pixel-for-pixel, warned of "unusual activity" on the recipient's account, and linked to a login page hosted on a

Carl B. Johnson Aug 15, 2021 7 min read
Removed Legitimate Software

Removed Legitimate Software: A Hidden Attack Vector

When Trusted Tools Become Trojan Horses In April 2021, security researchers at Kaspersky documented a campaign where threat actors took software that had been removed legitimate from vendor websites — discontinued, deprecated, or pulled due to vulnerabilities — and repackaged it with embedded malware. The attackers then hosted these poisoned versions on

Carl B. Johnson Aug 08, 2021 7 min read
Spoofing Caller

Spoofing Caller Attacks: How Hackers Weaponize Your Phone

In March 2021, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost over $54 million to phone spoofing and vishing schemes in the previous year alone. That number was climbing. And it wasn't just grandparents falling for "IRS" calls — it was finance directors

Carl B. Johnson Aug 08, 2021 7 min read