So-Called ‘Airline Phishing Assault’ Strikes Manufacturing, Shipping and Logistics Industries

According to Barracuda Networks, plentiful of its clients recently got struck with 'airline phishing assault' which seeks targets from industries in the manufacturing, shipping and logistics sectors, CSO Online reports. The phishing fraudsters pretend to be travel agents while dispatching e-mails which seem as having different kinds of e-tickets or airline passes.

Barracuda explains how prior to executing an attack, the fraudsters study about their targets for finding out which air flights, places to travel as well as ticket rates would normally be cited inside an authentic e-mail. The company's examination reveals that phishers are able to succeed in 90% plus instances to make workers of the target industry open the electronic mails as well as download the malicious attachments.

There's either one .docx else .pdf file attached to the fake e-mails that if viewed runs the embedded malicious software while diverts the recipients onto certain website disguised as a corporate travel agent or an airline. When victims visit the website they're induced towards divulging their company credentials that subsequently gets utilized for hacking corporate networks by the attackers. Security Intelligence posted this, April 5, 2017.

From a survey by Proofpoint, it's realized that BEC (business e-mail compromise) assaults are 45% up during October-December 2016 in comparison with the earlier months. The security firm further found that 66 per cent of the total BEC assaults used fake domains for e-mail ids in order to make the fraudulent phishing electronic mails show the identical domain which the attacked entity used. Amazingly, there's little relation among the target entity's size and the number of BEC assaults.

According to Vice-President Asaf Cidon for Barracuda's content security facilities, the BEC assaults have been prompting organizations to frame fresh defense strategies for themselves.

Cidon notes that the defense mechanism, which hitherto was one static, rule-induced strategy which would observe one common spam mail or virus for multitude of customers, is changing to detections by vibrant, mechanized systems which become knowledgeable of the assaults and then adapt to counteract them. The forthcoming security mechanisms for e-mail would require knowing the individual customer's
environment so the difficulties can be found within real time.

» SPAMfighter News - 4/7/2017