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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One Phishing Email Cost This Company $100 Million In 2019, a Lithuanian man named Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to stealing over $100 million from Google and Facebook using nothing more than fraudulent invoices and carefully crafted phishing emails. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, sent fake invoices to accounts payable
In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that phishing was the most frequently reported cybercrime — again. Over 193,000 complaints were filed for phishing alone, and the real number is far higher since most incidents go unreported. I've spent years watching organizations get
The Fake Mail That Drained $37 Million In 2024, Toyota Boshoku Corporation disclosed a business email compromise attack where a threat actor used fake mail to trick a finance executive into wiring approximately $37 million to a fraudulent bank account. The email looked legitimate. The sender address was nearly identical
The $4.88 Million Email That Looked Completely Normal In 2024, IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report pegged the average breach cost at $4.88 million — a record high. And phishing remained the most common initial attack vector. I've investigated dozens of these incidents firsthand,
Your Old AIM Email Address Is a Bigger Problem Than You Think In December 2017, AOL officially shut down AIM — AOL Instant Messenger — after 20 years of operation. Millions of users shrugged and moved on. But here's what most people didn't consider: their old AIM email
Your Inbox Is a Buffet — And Threat Actors Are Cooking In March 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that phishing was the number one crime type by victim count for the fifth year running, with over 298,000 complaints in a single year. Every one of
In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 complaints about phishing — making it the most reported cybercrime category for the fifth year running. That's not a number on a slide deck. That's hundreds of thousands of real organizations bleeding money,
A Single Fake Email Cost This Company $37 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that Business Email Compromise (BEC) schemes — built entirely on fake emails — accounted for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses across the United States. That figure only captures what
In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — attacks built on fakeemail addresses and spoofed sender identities — accounted for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses. That made it the single most financially devastating cybercrime category they tracked. Not ransomware. Not cryptojacking. Fake
In 2022, a single phishing email sent to a Twilio employee led to the compromise of 163 customer accounts, including high-profile targets like Signal. The attacker didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability or brute-force a password. They sent a text message that looked like it came from Twilio'
