Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

According to Zoho Workplace, organizations struggle to protect themselves as spam makes up 45% of all emails. These sophisticated threats deliberately exploit human psychology. Attackers convince people to bypass security measures, which leads to unauthorized access to the system. Standard defense mechanisms alone cannot curb these evolving threats. This blog explores how organizations can prevent social engineering using contextual threat intelligence and real-time behavioral analysis.

While it’s easy to look at the modern threat landscape as a cat-and-mouse game between sophisticated threat actors utilizing high-tech methods to hack their way into valuable systems, the reality can be far less dramatic, albeit equally as precarious.

Researchers at Bitdefender warn of a wave of social engineering attacks targeting WhatsApp accounts. The attacks begin with automated phone calls that instruct users to add a specific phone number to their WhatsApp contacts. The call then ends abruptly. The scammers are doing this to gather potential targets for future attacks. Most people will ignore the calls, but those who do add the number to their contacts will be more likely to fall for additional social engineering attacks.

Social engineering remains a primary initial access vector for cybercriminals, according to a new report from Europol. “Social engineering, which exploits human error to gain access to systems or personal information, stands out as a prominent technique used by criminal actors in this context,” Europol says.

ClickFix has quickly become a rampant social-engineering tactic. First observed back in October 2023, it aims to trick users into pasting commands into the run dialog box under the guise of verifying the user’s connection and authenticity to the domain. Given its ease of use and ability to bypass technical security measures, adoption of ClickFix has been growing at an alarming rate.

Arctic Wolf has identified a social engineering campaign targeting health care providers in the United States. Throughout multiple incidents, hospital help desks have received suspicious phone calls from unidentified individuals claiming to be doctors who had forgotten their password. When the callers were confronted with a request to verify their identities, including first name and department affiliation, the suspicious callers disconnected.

OpenAI has published a report looking at AI-enabled malicious activity, noting that threat actors are increasingly using AI tools to assist in social engineering attacks and influence operations. In one case, the company banned ChatGPT accounts that were likely being used in North Korean attempts to fraudulently obtain jobs at US companies. “Similar to the threat actors we disrupted and wrote about in February, the latest campaigns attempted to use AI at each step of the employment process.

The FBI is warning that the Silent Ransom Group (SRG) is targeting law firms with IT-themed social engineering attacks and callback phishing emails. SRG is a cybercriminal gang that demands ransoms in exchange for not leaking stolen data. “SRG has been operating since 2022 and has primarily been known for their callback phishing emails, masquerading as well-known businesses who offer subscription plans,” the FBI explains.