ANCHOR CYBER FEED

Clever and Widespread Google Phishing Campaign Raises Concerns Last week a new worm spread rapidly through the Internet. It used a very convincing (because it was partly genuine) Google Docs invitation to lure Google users into giving access to their Gmail accounts, then copied itself to addresses in the victim's contacts. Repeating this process led to a rapid storm of emails. Google took action within an hour to remove the rogue app from users' account permissions and stem the tide of emails, but the success of the tactic shows the risk inherent in cloud-based accounts like this -- a quieter version of the same tactic could easily compromise a handful of people without attracting much attention. Selecting and authorizing specific file-sharing services for your organizational data is a good idea, as is ensuring users are trained in how to use them (and what NOT to do). https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/05/dont-trust-oauth-why-the-google-docs-worm-was-so-convincing/ ...

Last week, former Secretary of State General Colin Powell became the latest public figure to have his personal email account hacked and his messages exposed publicly, to great embarrassment to himself and others. He joins a long list of political, government, and entertainment figures who have endured this same fate. Organizations cannot ignore the potential impact of such an incident occurring to one of their personnel, especially senior management in highly visible roles. The good news is that this type of incident is avoidable. The majority of these incidents have happened when a user's password was guessed, obtained via keystroke monitoring or other snooping, or reset via social engineering. The social engineering method that has been used against many prominent people, including the Director of the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence, was to contact their Internet provider or phone company and request a password reset. These methods can be largely defeated using ...