A leaked bulletin from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned that, in light of the situation on Ukraine’s border, destructive cyber-attacks from Russia-backed advanced persistent threat (APT) actors look likely to be launched soon. The Russian state is thought to have been behind a massive cyber-attack that targeted 70 Ukrainian government websites, and the National Cyber…
In this tech insight, we look at what a watering hole attack is, some examples of such attacks, and how businesses can defend against this threat. Poisoning The Water A watering hole attack is a targeted, ‘supply chain,’ cyber-attack strategy, similar to spear phishing. With this strategy, the attacker identifies a website that’s frequented by users of a targeted…
In this article, we look at how spam filers work and what can be done to ensure that our legitimate emails reach their target and aren’t wrongly filtered out as ‘spam’ . Why We Need Spam Filters Although we’re focusing on how to avoid spam filters, it’s worth noting how important they are to businesses. Figures vary between surveys…
It has been reported that 40 themes and 53 plugins belonging to AccessPress Themes, a Nepal-based company were backdoored with malicious code in the first half of September 2021. It is believed that the infected extensions gave attackers full access to sites, and that access also appears to have been sold to operators of spam campaigns. Site owners who…
The ICO launched an investigation after more than 1,000 Sussex and Surrey police officers were found to have downloaded a free app to covertly record calls with members of the public on police-issued phones. Google Play Store App The app, free to download for the Google Play Store, and called ‘Another Call Recorder’ (ACR), had been approved for use in…
In this article, we take a look at some of the ways users can assess how good their VPN really is. What Is A VPN? A ‘Virtual Private Network’ (VPN) is used to keep internet activity private, evade censorship / maintain net neutrality and use public Wi-Fi securely (e.g., avoid threats such as ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks). A VPN achieves this…
Figures from software technologies company ‘Check Point’ show that an upward trend of malicious activity through 2020 reached a peak of 925 cyber-attacks a week per organisation at the end of 2021. The result of this trend was a massive 50 per cent increase in cyber attacks on corporate networks in 2021, with education and research the most attacked…
Your browser may have a Password Manager but sometimes an issue (e.g., conflicting extensions) may cause the browser not to save or remember your passwords. Here’s how to fix the issue for popular browsers Chrome and Edge: For Google Chrome: – Open the Chrome menu (the three dots top right) and select ‘Settings’. – Select ‘Autofill’ on the sidebar….
Email security specialists Avanan have reported that hackers have been leveraging the comment feature in Google Docs to target primarily Outlook users. The attack works by hackers adding a comment to a Google Doc mentioning the target with an @. This automatically sends an email from Google to that target person’s inbox which contains bad links to malware or…
In this tech insight, we look at what DuckDuckGo is, what features it offers, and why businesses may consider using it. DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo is a privacy-centred search engine / privacy browsing app, which is available as a download for mobile devices and a Chrome extension. The company, founded in 2008, also plans to launch a desktop browser for macOS…
