Month: November 2018

Anatomy of a brilliant Phishing attack

There has been an increase in the number of e-mails and text messages that are landing in my spam folders recently. I am not sure why the upturn is happening, but some of the e-mails are getting very convincing.

It was not long ago that I would get badly spelled, poorly constructed e-mails that were easy to spot,

Subject: Yuor Natwast account has ten tnarsactions pending.

Now, not only do I not have a Natwest account, but the typo’s in the subject line made it super obvious.

Yesterday I got an e-mail.

Subject: Lloyds Bank Fraud Alert.

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Hack Recovery 101

So, you have just been hacked, now what ?

Firstly, if the hackers have accessed your bank account, call your bank and get them to start sorting this out for you. They are very, very good at this, but it takes time. While you are waiting, lets secure everything we can.

Step 1 – Secure your e-mail account.

First of all, ensure that your e-mail provider supports ‘Multi-Factor Authentication’ or MFA for short.

I cannot stress how important this is, if you use your ISP’s ‘free’ e-mail, there is a very high likelihood that they do not support MFA, even if they do, there is more than a strong chance that in order to access your account from your phone, you are forced to use a static ‘application’ password.

This ‘static application password’ is the email equivalent of having ten deadbolts on your front door and your back door protected by a small, rusty, 99p padlock from Wilco. 

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