Good evening subscribers and visitors, and welcome back to another post from ToBeSecured. This week, I've been planning to have a change of scenery instead of writing from my kitchen counter, patio, or bed. I haven't tested out this change just yet, but next week I'm going to give it a try and let you know how I like it. What is this change you may be wondering? Well, I have an amazing view sitting at my pool and usually it's empty during the day, so I don't have to worry about any distractions while writing or recording (if it's a Tuesday). I'll incorporate a few pictures within my next post whenever I build up the energy to walk to the pool for you all to see how beautiful it is. You can check out my latest episode of Cyber Tuesdays via my YouTube channel (Kassirer Dunn) or my Instagram TV series (@ToBeSecured), which can be found at the footer of this page.
As you all know, we're still going through the Coronavirus pandemic and it seems like this will be the new normal as of now. Today, I'm going to showcase how Hackers have taken advantage of this time and are working hard to break the pockets of companies. This post was inspired by an SU alumna and YouTuber, MelodyAlmeByrd, who fell victim to a ransomware attack via her email. I hope this post helps and educates you as you learn about how hackers are partnering with each other to ruin people's lives.
This week alone has revealed some interesting news as I found out some US companies lost $1.2 trillion due to data breaches last year.
According to the ForgeRock 2020 Consumer Identity Breach Report, U.S. organizations have reported the compromise of more than five billion records in 2019.
Unauthorized access was the most common attack vector, accounting for 40% of all attack vectors used to steal data.
This was followed by ransomware (14%) and phishing (14%) that were used to steal users’ sensitive data.
Misconfigured systems and malicious insiders were also attributed to some data breaches that occurred in 2019.
Melody received an email from a hacker posing as an employee of Instagram claiming they would verify her account if she filled out a form they created. The first mistake she made was not paying attention to the email address, an official Instagram employee would send an email from @instagram.com, not @gmail.com. Secondly, if you go to the Instagram app, go to your settings>security>Emails from Instagram, from there you can view what emails Instagram has sent you about security and login in the last 14 days as well as 'other' emails that aren't security related. Lastly, grammatical errors are common across the board for hackers, so if a sentence doesn't make sense or there's a spelling error, it's a hacker 9x out of 10.
As I mentioned in the comments section under her video, the worst thing she could've done was in a hacker-controlled webpage, fill out that data form which consisted of: full name, email address, phone number, and password to her account. Because not only did the hackers gain access to her Instagram account, but they changed the email address used to login to her Instagram as well.
If this ever happens to you, follow the steps I listed above and never click a link or open a file from a source you're unsure about.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Subscribe to my blog if you haven't already and follow my Instagram - ToBeSecured for CyberTuesday vlogs. I have launched my YouTube channel and you can find me by simply typing Kassirer Dunn into the search engine. Thank you for tuning in and remember ToBeSecured!
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