{"id":131886,"date":"2016-07-29T11:12:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T09:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=131886"},"modified":"2016-07-29T11:12:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T09:12:03","slug":"here-is-who-whaling-email-attackers-target-the-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/131886\/here-is-who-whaling-email-attackers-target-the-most\/","title":{"rendered":"Here is who whaling email attackers target the most"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whaling email attacks \u2013 a form of phishing attack which is targeted at senior executives and other high profile people in a business \u2013 are on the increase.<\/p>\n<p>In whaling attacks, fraudsters often use legitimate executive names and email addresses to fool company employees to provide them with sensitive information, or even transfer money to them.<\/p>\n<p>The whaling attacks typically involve highly targeted emails, where the cybercriminal tries to trick the employee with a well-crafted email or web page, with content related to his role in the company.<\/p>\n<p>The attackers often use a legal subpoena, customer complaint, or executive issue as the content of the email.<\/p>\n<p>The source of the email is also spoofed (faked) to make it look like it is coming from a legitimate source or business authority.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\"><strong>Who is targeted in whaling attacks<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>A recent Mimecast survey, done in partnership with MyBroadband, showed that fraudsters typically pretend to be the CEO, financial managers, or sales people.<\/p>\n<p>The survey results further showed that the source email address (the @domain) is often spoofed to look legitimate.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the prominent findings of the Mimecast whaling attack survey.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Whaling attackers typically pretend to be the CEO, financial manager, or from the sales department.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In 39% of whaling attacks the email domain (@domain) was faked (spoofed).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Most South African companies face regular whaling attacks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Some companies have reported significant losses caused by whaling attacks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\"><strong>Big increase in whaling email attacks<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Whaling email attacks have become so prevalent that the FBI is warning companies about the risk of this cybercrime.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe schemers go to great lengths to spoof company e-mail or use social engineering to assume the identity of the CEO, a company attorney, or trusted vendor,\u201d the FBI said.<\/p>\n<p>The fraudsters research employees who manage money, and use language specific to the company they are targeting, the FBI said.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI has provided the following tips for businesses to avoid falling victim to whaling attacks.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Be wary of e-mail-only wire transfer requests and requests involving urgency<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Pick up the phone and verify legitimate business partners.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Be cautious of mimicked e-mail addresses<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Practice multi-level authentication.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent Mimecast survey reveals which members of an organization are usually targeted in whaling email attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":123813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[1320,26,6609,11528,11526,375],"class_list":["post-131886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-cyber-security","tag-headline","tag-internet-security","tag-mimecast","tag-mimecast-south-africa","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131888,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131886\/revisions\/131888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}