Security Awareness – Brand Impersonation and Social Engineering Still a Favorite Combination for Credential Phishing

Security researchers at Armorblox observed a recent phishing campaign utilizing a very convincing brand impersonation of American Express to fool victims and steal credentials. The phish includes an attachment purporting to be an urgent message informing the recipient that their account will be suspended unless they perform a mandatory account verification. According to Armorbolx, the recent ploy bypassed security controls and targeted at least 16,000 email addresses for employees at a large international nonprofit agency. The message included the very common subject line, “Important Notification About Your Account,” which is repeatedly used to elicit a sense of urgency among victims and influence them to click on malicious links or open attachments before they think. Read more at SC Magazine.

WaterISAC regularly highlights these types campaigns so members can forward them on to users as security awareness reminders to stress the importance of being skeptical about everything. Just because it appears trustworthy, doesn’t mean it’s to be trusted.