In the last month, a work colleague received three emails asking for money for one reason or another.
Not so long ago, my friends received an email, supposedly from me, asking for help as ‘I was facing some money difficulties.’
Some of them actually wired money to the account number requested in the email without even checking with me on whether or not I actually did need the money!
They said the letter was so convincing and had such accurate personal details that they really did think it was from me.
I know that email scams are on the rise, but I was quit surprised to read that one out of every 101 emails sent this year was a malicious one!
That is two-thirds of more than half-a-billion emails, making email-based threats a popular means of cyberattack.
A new report from FireEye says the email is the most popular attack vector for hackers and cybercriminals – by far.
Some 91 per cent of cybercrime starts with an email. Interestingly, it only takes one malicious email to infiltrate an organisation.
“Not only is email the most pervasive form of communication, it is also the most popular vector for cyberattacks. This makes email the biggest vulnerability for every organisation,” says Ken Bagnall, vice-president of email security at FireEye.
“A single malicious email can cause significant brand damage and financial losses.”
CEO Fraud is an email attack wherein the attacker pretends to be the boss and tricks an employee at the organisation into wiring funds or important documents to the attacker. This impersonation attack often happens on a Friday in Europe or the US.
In the report, 90pc of attacks blocked during analysis for the report were malware-less.
Phishing attacks, the fraudulent attempt to get one’s sensitive information through electronic communication, (which is basically how they got my information email my friends) alone made up 81pc of the blocked malware-less emails.
This number almost doubled from January to June of this year.
Based on the data gathered, phishing attacks will continue to rise, while impersonation attacks at 19pc remain relatively proportional to the total number of attacks seen.
The report also says that mobile users are more prone to attacks when checking emails, since most mobile emails only display clients’ names and not email addresses.
Attackers can easily trick users into thinking they’re corresponding with someone they know.
If you think about it, if the hacker had sent a letter out to 10 of my contacts and only one had wired the money, he or she would still have made a month’s salary by just a click of a button!
Scary!
Reem Antoon is a former GDN news editor. She can be reached on: clanmun4@gmail.com