Federal agencies have warned about scammers exploiting the public's interest in the COVID-19 vaccine to harvest personal information and steal money through multiple ongoing and emerging fraud schemes. Potential indicators of such fraudulent activity highlighted by the FBI include offers for early access to vaccines conditioned by payment in advance, requests to pay out to receive a vaccine or to get added to a waiting list, and offers to ship doses of the vaccine in exchange of money transfer
Cyber News
Cyber threats are evolving every day, keeping up with them is a full-time job. The WESTprotect Cyber News is your source for how these changes affect you in the real estate, title, mortgage, and settlement services industry. From cyber threats to new Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP’s) we’ve got you covered.
FireEye, a Top Cybersecurity Firm, Says It Was Hacked by a Nation-State. The Silicon Valley company said hackers — almost certainly Russian — made off with tools that could be used to mount new attacks around the world. FireEye revealed on Tuesday that its own systems were pierced by what it called “a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities.” The company said hackers used “novel techniques” to make off with its own tool kit, which could be useful in mounting new attacks around the world.
It's the giving season, and cybercriminals are more actively looking to steal gift cards. One of the most popular brands in their sight is giant retailer Target. A trick that crooks are currently pulling is to lure victims to fake sites that check the balance on the gift card.
Interpol, along with Nigerian law enforcement agencies and security firm Group-IB, has uncovered a massive Nigerian business email compromise gang that was active across more than 150 countries. The group, dubbed TMT, has been active since 2017 and has targeted nearly 500,000 government and private organizations with BEC scams that used phishing and advanced social engineering techniques to extort payments from its victims.
Real estate firm ‘Long & Foster’ confirmed that the August ransomware incident resulted in a data breach. The exposed information includes full names, addresses, and “W-9” and “Form 1099” details. There are potentially some high-profile individuals among compromised clients. WESTprotect recommends you pay close attention to any request to download files or click links.
An increasing number of websites are asking visitors to approve “notifications,” browser modifications that periodically display messages on the user’s mobile or desktop device. In many cases these notifications are benign, but several dodgy firms are paying site owners to install their notification scripts and then selling that communications pathway to scammers and online hucksters.