Email: The Cyber Weapon of Choice

Symantec's 2017 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) details how simple tactics and innovative cyber criminals led to unprecedented outcomes in global threat activity. This report covers a lot of areas like international bank heists, disrupted elections, and state-sponsored attacks. However, one thing stood out and that is the following paragraph:

Email Becomes the Weapon of Choice

Email posed a dangerous and efficient threat to users: one in 131 emails contained malware, the highest rate in five years.  And Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, relying on spear-phishing emails, targeted over 400 businesses every day, draining $3 billion over the last three years.

A combination of PowerShell, a common scripting language installed on PCs, and Microsoft Office files was an effective weapon. Cyber criminals used the two to leave a lighter footprint and hide in plain sight. Last year, 95 percent of PowerShell files seen by Symantec in the wild were malicious.

Take a read of the Symantec report.

June 1st, 2017 |Categories: Symantec, Phishing, Ransomware, WannaCry, Email

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