Phishes roasting in an open email...malware nipping at your nose. It's Phishmas and all the hackers are stirring--even your mouse!
It's that most wonderful time of the year--Phishmas, when hackers get out their naughty and nice list and check it twice. It's the holiday season when hackers are hard at work trying to phish as many as possible.
In fact, according to Check Point, 17% of all malicious files distributed by email in November were related to orders and shipping; one scam involving a fake Louis Vuitton domain saw 15,000 attacks in a week.
In December, this will reach a crescendo. Starting this month, we're introducing the 12 Days of Phishmas. Each day will showcase a new holiday-themed phishing attack that our researchers have observed.
These attacks tend to take advantage of shipping and package notifications, as you can imagine, but they go beyond that. We've seen a noted increase in impersonation and paycheck fraud. You need money to pay for holiday gifts, and impersonating paycheck notifications or direct deposit can be a great way to scam someone out of money.
To see these, and all other, Attack Briefs we produce, be sure to sign up here.
Just remember, when it comes to the holidays and email security, it's much easier to prevent presents from being bought as opposed to taking them away after they've been placed under the tree.