Showing posts with label spear-phishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spear-phishing. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Fake Tweet Result of Phishing

As follow-up to the story yesterday about @AP's fake tweet, it has been reported that the hacked message came about an hour after company employees received an expertly-crafted, spear-phishing email.

Spear-phishing is getting harder to detect as successful practices inform future "phishes." What doesn't work is abandoned, reworked and the culprit becomes increasingly less suspicious.

It may come as a surprise or not, but 19% of spear-phishing attempts are successful. Someone in an organization takes the personalized bait and hands out secure information.

The effects of spear-phishing can be avoided by fact checking. I haven't seen a copy of the message received by AP employees yesterday. It would be interesting to see it and fact check it.

Can anyone find it?