04Oct 2023 by nathan

Quickbooks Update Scam

Tech news
We often get emails forwarded from customers (and soon to be customers :) ) that they get from scammers and suspected scammers and I often wonder just how many folks actually fall for the scam. We got one today that is a perfect example of what to look for if you suspect you're looking at a scam email and, at the same time, how to put together a really bad phishing email. So, starting at the top, the domain name intuitquickbookssupports.com. A quick search at CentralOps confirms that this domain name was just registered in January of this year and that it's registered at GoDaddy. Looking up intuit.com on the same site confirms that that's not where Intuit registers their domain names. Moving on down to the grammar of the…
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08Jun 2020 by nathan

Another day, another phishing scam (or two)

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Tech news
As more and more people continue to work from home, we are seeing attackers leveraging social engineering tactics like phishing even more frequently, knowing that these teleworkers are typically not behind a corporate firewall that would likely block their malicious payloads. With that in mind, I received two emails today that highlight some of the ways that we can identify phishing and avoid becoming a statistic. Both emails appear to be from very different senders with very different approaches but, ultimately, with the same end game; get me to click on a malicious link. The sample below is a simple based email attempting to capitalize on the users fear that their email is about to go away and, if they don't act fast, they will lose data. Note that the…
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27May 2020 by nathan
Phishing Emails. What to look for to protect yourself, your team and your organization.

Phishing Emails. What to look for to protect yourself, your team and your organization.

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Tech news
Phishing has long since been a go-to for the bad guys as an easy way to get malware on or access to victim computers. The trick for the bad guy / attacker is to make the email look like something legitimate and trigger some sort of fear response. The trick for the good guy / target is to be able to spot the scam, and that's the point of this quick post. The email below is one that I just received that's trying to get me to click on a link to confirm my email address. Let's take a look. In the email above, the goal of the attacker is to get the target to click the link to 'prove your email account ownership'. The email looks real enough. It…
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17Apr 2020 by nathan
Beware, fake ransomware attacks are making the rounds again.

Beware, fake ransomware attacks are making the rounds again.

CTC NEWS, Industry News, Tech news
Don't get me wrong, there are still tons of legitimate ransomware attacks circulating about but the fake ones seem to ebb and flow as well. Below is an email that we received this morning. The domain is one that's legitimately ours but a) it's unused and b) there's no database there. So, it's a complete farce but it's an excellent opportunity to highlight some key things to watch out for to protect yourself. If you get a similar email (these tend to be pretty boilerplate), know that it's likely false. Another popular pretext is that some random attacker has caught you in 'compromising positions' or watching 'illicit material'. The email is regarding an unused domain.Since the domain name is unused, there's no database there for the attackers to have download.The…
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