Learn how attackers use psychological manipulation to trick people into revealing sensitive information or performing unsafe actions. Topics include pretexting, baiting, tailgating, vishing, and real-world social engineering case studies that expose common human vulnerabilities.
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A Legitimate Invoice From PayPal — That's Also a Scam In late 2024, security researchers at Avanan documented a campaign where threat actors sent real PayPal invoices to victims — not spoofed emails, not lookalike domains, but actual invoices generated through PayPal's own platform. The emails passed every
A Single Email Cost This Company $100 Million In 2015, Ubiquiti Networks disclosed that threat actors used carefully crafted emails impersonating company executives to trick finance employees into wiring $46.7 million to overseas accounts. The attackers didn't exploit a software vulnerability. They exploited people — with spear phishing.
The Email That Cost One Company $100 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — a form of spear phishing — accounted for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses. That wasn't a typo. Billions. And those are just the cases
In late 2024, the FBI issued a stark warning: AI-driven phishing attacks targeting Gmail users had reached a level of sophistication that made them nearly indistinguishable from legitimate communications. We're not talking about the laughably bad "Nigerian prince" emails anymore. These are pixel-perfect replicas of Google
The Breach That Bankrupted a 40-Person Company In 2023, a small accounting firm in Sacramento lost every client record it had. An employee clicked a link in what looked like a DocuSign notification. Within 72 hours, the ransomware encrypted everything — backups included. The firm closed its doors three months later.
In 2024, the average cost of a data breach hit $4.88 million — the highest figure IBM had ever recorded. That number didn't climb because organizations lacked firewalls. It climbed because most people fundamentally misunderstand what cybersecurity actually is. If you've searched for a cybersecurity definition,
In February 2024, Change Healthcare — the largest medical claims processor in the United States — was hit by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group. The attack disrupted billing systems at hospitals and pharmacies nationwide for weeks. The entry point? Stolen credentials used on a remote access portal that lacked multi-factor authentication. One
A Single Fake Email Cost Facebook and Google $100 Million Between 2013 and 2015, a Lithuanian man named Evaldas Rimasauskas sent a series of fake email messages to employees at Facebook and Google. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, attached fraudulent invoices, and directed payments to bank accounts he controlled.
In January 2024, a finance employee at a multinational engineering firm in Hong Kong wired $25 million to threat actors after a video call with what appeared to be the company's CFO. The call was a deepfake. But the attack started weeks earlier — with a single spear phishing
In 2019, a Lithuanian national named Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to stealing over $120 million from Google and Facebook using a sophisticated man in the middle attack scheme. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, intercepted invoice communications, and redirected payments to bank accounts he controlled. The scheme ran for two
