Win the Lukewarm War Against the Eavesdroppers Who May be Peering into Your Sensitive Emails

In today’s cybercrime vs cybersecurity theater, there is an element of cat and mouse going on. Now you can be the Cat! 

Armand here again—this time from Langley, VA, home of the US Central Intelligence Agency. Why am I hanging out near the HQ of the world’s foremost spy organization? To make a point about how cybercrime vs cybersecurity is very much a cat and mouse, spy vs. spy affair.

At the height of the Cold War (and you can read about this in any John Le Carre or Tom Clancy book) the two superpowers often engaged in a shadowy back and forth of sending agents deep into the others’ territory in hopes of getting an informational edge. The risks were great—likely death if caught. The rewards were great too. It is often speculated that this type of espionage may have won the Cold War for the United States, as it found that the Soviet Union would not be able to keep up technologically if the US announced a space-based missile defense program that may or may not have been real.

Spy novel writers today often seem nostalgic for those days of cat and mouse, spy vs. spy-style espionage. Back then you had two fairly equally matched partners where certain lines were understood not to be crossed. You even had a hotline between Washington and Moscow in case the Cold War started to get uncomfortably hot. It was a chess game, and each side knew (roughly) who the players were. 

In today’s cybercrime vs cybersecurity theater, there is certainly an element of cat and mouse going on as each side tries to outwit, out-trick, and out-innovate the other. However, this conflict is more asymmetric, and you can be sure each side really doesn’t know who the other is, and there is definitely no hotline. So, maybe this conflict can best be described as a kind of Lukewarm War?

And perhaps it’s the cybercriminals who are winning the Lukewarm War. Ransomware payouts increased from $34 million in 2022 to $1.1 billion in 2023 (per the FBI and other sources)! How is this possible? Because certain ransomware gangs out-innovated the authorities in the last year or so. They began to more aggressively offer their ransom-enabling software-as-a-service (“RaaS”) to other less-resourced cybercriminals for a cut of the proceeds. Essentially, the bigger gangs are offering franchise business opportunities to entrepreneurial cybercriminals the world over.

Thankfully, the FBI has just disrupted one of the most successful ransomware cybercriminal gangs last week. I say "disrupted” because they cannot locate the source despite their “$10 million bounty” offered for information. So, this cybercriminal gang will no doubt rebuild and be back. (Note, they have located some of the down-rank players in the field, but not the masterminds.)

This is now the perfect time to give you some news you could actually use! You may have already heard me say that with RPost we can show you how to save 50% or more on your eSignatures in just 15 minutes. 

Now we've added our famous cybercriminal eavesdropping detection technology to email, attached-to-email documents and files, and eSignatures, so you can now "eavesdrop on the cybercriminal eavesdroppers" and play your own game of cat and mouse (you being the cat!). That’s right. There’s no shame in enjoying your own personal Lukewarm War against the eavesdroppers who may be peering into your sensitive business (or personal) emails either in your inbox or, most likely, at the recipient who may not have the security that you have employed.

And, with RSign, you can now do this while likely saving a bundle on your eSign costs. You can see if cybercriminals are eavesdropping on your eSign transactions intending to lure those who sign your purchase orders or other transactions into paying fake invoices (with all of the true transaction details other than bank account for payments) with funds going to the cybercriminal gangs. 

Feel free to contact us to learn more about Email Eavesdropping™ detection and other ways we’re thwarting cybercrime before it happens so that you can win the Lukewarm War against your cyber adversaries.

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