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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In March 2021, a massive phishing campaign impersonating Microsoft Office 365 hit over 10,000 mailboxes across the financial services sector in a single week. The emails were nearly flawless — correct logos, legitimate-looking sender domains, and urgent language about password expiration. Dozens of employees handed over their credentials before anyone
A Ransomware Group That Starts With Your Inbox In June 2021, a mid-sized manufacturer discovered every file server in their environment encrypted. The ransom note was signed "Medusa." The entry point? A single phishing email that harvested an employee's VPN credentials. The Medusa ransomware gang phishing
In June 2021, Google disclosed that it had sent over 50,000 warnings to account holders about state-sponsored phishing and malware attempts in just the first three quarters of the year — a 33% increase over the same period in 2020. If you've received a Gmail account access warning,
A Single Fake Email Cost Facebook and Google $120 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, complete with forged invoices and contracts. By the time both companies
The Inbox Is the Front Door — And It's Wide Open According to the 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, phishing is involved in 36% of all confirmed data breaches. That number jumped 11 percentage points from the year before. Let that sink in — more than a third of
16,000 Complaints and Counting: Why the FBI Is Sounding the Alarm In February 2021, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) began tracking a dramatic spike in smishing — phishing attacks delivered via SMS text messages. The FBI warning on smishing texts wasn't hypothetical. It came
Every Great Attack Starts With a Setlist In July 2021, a single phishing email gave a threat actor access to credentials at a Florida IT management firm, triggering the Kaseya VSA ransomware attack that cascaded to over 1,500 businesses worldwide. One click. One employee. One email that someone didn&
One Click Cost Colonial Pipeline $4.4 Million In May 2021, a single compromised credential shut down the largest fuel pipeline in the United States. Colonial Pipeline paid a $4.4 million ransom to a threat actor group called DarkSide. The entry point wasn't some exotic zero-day exploit.
In March 2021, a single phishing email led to a credential theft incident at a European banking authority that exposed personal data from thousands of email accounts. The attack wasn't sophisticated. It didn't exploit some exotic zero-day vulnerability. It started with a convincing email and a
In July 2020, a handful of Twitter employees received phone calls from people claiming to be IT administrators. Those calls led to the compromise of 130 high-profile accounts — including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — and a Bitcoin scam that netted over $100,000 in hours. The whole thing started
