Information Security

Phishing Scam Article:

The phishing attack seen in this article was used by criminals who sent fraudulent messages to take or intercept the payment from the City of Moline, Illinois to a vendor that had contracted work with the city. Since the incorrect payment was made the city still owed the original vendor resulting in having to pay twice. This made the City of Moline the victim of this crime and the cities taxpayers. The city and people in general can protect themselves from phishing attacks by thoroughly communicating with the individuals and organizations one is paying, try to avoid only using email and be aware of strange grammatical errors or suspected impersonation in said emails.

Hacking:

The hacking in this article is related to a hacker that broke into the finance App company, Robinhood and their internal network. While inside the hacker accessed information of 7 million users, but only their emails were taken according to Robinhood's internal investigation. However, 10 people had more specific account information taken by the hacker. This was reportedly done by the hacker socially engineering a Robinhood employee to get credential access to user information. The victim in this scenario is Robinhood and its employees as both could lose money from this hacking. Events like this can be prevented by avoiding social engineering traps and Robinhood increasing their online security for user information.

Ransomware Attack:

The ransomware attack in this article pertains to two men that caused the shutdown of a meat processing plant and an internet software provider. The men are both apart of an organized crime group known as REvil which use ransomware attacks as leverage to demand ransom payments before they unblock the data of companies they have sabotaged. The victim here is companies that were attacked by the organized crime group. These types of attacks can be avoided and protected against by seeking out ransomware groups and their tools to understand how they will attack, and to stop them before they strike again as was referenced in the article.