Email Prankster Threatens National Security
Why was the newly minted White House communications director, Scaramucci, fired? We don’t know for sure. But an examination of his emails would have shown that he spent the weekend responding to spear phishing emails purported to be sent from Reince Preibus, former White House chief of staff.
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has joined a new club along with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Citigroup. Each has fallen victim to an email prankster who, posing as a colleague or friend, sent email messages to them and tricked them into responding. Luckily no money or data was stolen. These banks spend millions on cybersecurity yet the weakest link is still the human factor.
Cyber pirates have found easy prey in real estate brokers, title agents and estate attorneys. Their emails are a treasure trove of information about pending transactions involving large wire transfers. Real estate buyers, eager to close the deal, blindly trust the email they receive and the advisors with whom they correspond.
What do United Airlines and footballer David Beckham have in common? Disastrous leaked emails. In these recent cases, the leaked emails appear to be legitimate, though Beckham claims some of the leaked emails were “doctored.” But how do we know that leaked email messages discussed in news stories and tabloid columns are actually authentic?
When the politicians in Colorado legalized cannabis, we all learned about the after effects of Rocky Mountain brownies – but the calories and cannabis burn off after a few hours.
What about Russian Forged Cookies? While these “cookies” are tasteless, they have long-lasting after effects that can be costly.
RPost has launched an educational campaign to ensure that registered investment advisors (RIA’s) can securely communicate with clients and comply with rules enforced by auditors and regulatory organizations.
Email security has been a hot topic as of late, with last week’s news of a supposed breach of 272 million email usernames and passwords and recent statements made by a hacker who claims to have accessed Hillary Clinton’s private email server two years before the private server’s existence was first reported by the New York Times. In the latter story, the hacker known as “Guccifer” claims he correctly guessed Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL password and used the hacked email account as a stepping stone to Clinton’s private email server.
In the past, for individuals and small businesses, cyber security was important to mitigate the inconvenience of spam, viruses that required restoring back-ups of corrupt files, and letters to credit bureaus to clear up identity theft issues.
