Email Phishing for IT Providers How Phishing Emails Have Changed and How to Protect Your IT Clients
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Email Phishing for IT Providers How phishing emails have changed and how to protect your IT clients 1 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved. I [email protected] I (800) 650 – 8930 (800) 650-8930 I [email protected] Contents Introduction ............................................................................................ 2 Phishing overview .................................................................................. 3 Trends in phishing emails ...................................................................... 6 Email phishing tactics .......................................................................... 11 Steps for MSP & VARS .......................................................................... 24 Advice for your clients .......................................................................... 29 Sources .................................................................................................. 35 1 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved. I [email protected] I (800) 650 – 8930 Introduction There are only so many ways to break into a bank. You can march through the door. You can climb through a window. You can tunnel through the floor. There is the service entrance, the employee entrance, and access on the roof. Criminals who want to rob a bank will probably use an open route – such as a side door. It’s easier than breaking down a wall. Criminals who want to break into your network face a similar challenge. They need to enter. They can look for a weakness in your network – maybe a vulnerability in your server – but it’s easier for them to use an open route. Email is one of their favorites. Email is a door into your network. Data passes through it every day. If criminals want to break in, some will throw on a disguise and try to sneak by. By pretending to be someone else, such as someone you respect, they will try to earn enough of your trust to steal from you. This is called Phishing Phishing is the practice of pretending to be a trusted entity with the goal of stealing someone’s information. The most common type is email phishing, and that is the focus of this report. 2 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved. I [email protected] I (800) 650 – 8930 Overview What is phishing? Email phishing works like this: 1. A criminal sends an email to a potential victim. The email appears to come from a trusted sender AtAttatackck FFlowlow – such as a bank or one of the victim’s contacts. Common Paths for a Phishing Email Aack 2. The email urges the person to download an attachment, click a link, or reply to the message Email is Blocked with sensitive information. by Spam Filter mALICIOUS eMAIL aRRIVES User Opens 3. The person either disregards the email or takes Malicious Email the action requested by the sender. If the action is taken, then the person is one step closer to becoming a victim. User Clicks on User Downloads User Replies to Embedded Link Attachments the Message Many phishing emails are the beginning of a larger attack, such as the theft of a customer database. For example, by successfully phishing a victim’s administrative credentials, an attacker may identify Webpage Opens several servers and databases on the network, breach Malware User Sends them, and export the data. Infection Sensitive Info Webpage Forces Author’s Note: This report defines phishing emails as a Page Requests Malware Onto User Credentials the User’s System sub-type of malicious email that are designed to (Phishing) (Drive-By extract information from a target. Other reports Download) use a broader definition that includes other types of malicious email, such as messages that infect victims with ransomware. Crisis User Sends Malware Since these types do not have a primary goal of extracting Sensitive Info Infection Averted information from users, we consider them outside the scope of this report. However, many of the suggestions we provide can apply to all types of malicious email. 3 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved. I [email protected] I (800) 650 – 8930 Overview Big data breaches are phishy Email phishing has been around since the 1980s. Anthem – Jan. 2015 With roughly 30 years to work on the problem, you Investigators suspect the breach of Anthem, the might suspect a security expert had solved it. That’s second-largest health insurance provider in the U.S., not the case. began with phishing emails. The messages tricked several employees into visiting fake websites controlled Email phishing is one of the most popular means by the attackers and entering their login credentials. of launching a cyber attack. It’s found worldwide The breach compromised the personal information across all industries and company sizes. of about 80 million people, or the rough equivalent of 25% of the U.S. population. Some of the most well-known cyber attacks in the last five years began with clever phishing emails. As you will see later in this report, all trends indicate that email phishing is here to stay, and in many ways Target Corp – Nov. 2013 the problem is getting worse. Attackers successfully phished an HVAC company that subcontracted with Target. This led to the breach of Target’s network and the theft of 110 million customer and credit card records. 95% of all attacks on Sony Corp – Fall 2014 enterprise networks are Company executives gave up their Apple ID credentials in response to a spear phishing campaign. This led the result of successful to the crippling of the company’s network and mass destruction of its data. Before deleting the data, the spear phishing. attackers published much of it online. This included Alan Paller, SANS Research Director unfinished movie scripts, salary lists, thousands of via Network World social security numbers, and thousands of company emails. 4 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved. I [email protected] I (800) 650 – 8930 Overview Small businesses are a phishing pond Data breaches at huge corporations make great The proportion of spear phishing attacks against SMBs headlines, but they obscure an important fact: small has grown every year since 2013. Last year, 43% and medium businesses (SMBs) are major targets of all spear phishing attacks targeted companies for spear phishing attacks. with fewer than 250 employees, according to this chart from the Symantec 2016 Internet Security Spear phishing is nearly identical to standard email Threat Report (ISTR). phishing – except it is more targeted. Rather than sending the same message to millions of addresses, Small businesses may not make headlines when they the attackers focus on a specific person or group. are hit by a phishing attack, but the results can be devastating nonetheless. Data theft, financial loss, Targets of spear phishing can be as broad as “all and tarnished reputations are just the beginning accountants at businesses with 100 or fewer of a long road that victims can be forced to march. employees.” Or it can be as narrow as “Jennifer Johnson the CPA at Acme Inc.” By researching the target and tailoring their emails and tactics, the attackers greatly improve their success rate. (More about spear phishing in the next section) Spear-Phishing Attacks by Size of Targeted Organization 5 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved. I [email protected] I (800) 650 – 8930 Trends in Phishing Emails 1. Custom emails with fewer targets Phishing attackers used a batch-and-blast approach for years. They crafted campaigns on a mass scale. Spear-Phishing Email Campaigns One phishing email was sent to thousands – even millions – of people with the hope of a success rate in the low single digits. Today, mass phishing is still popular, but it is in decline. Cyber criminals have grown savvier and are investing in custom attacks against smaller groups (i.e. spear phishing). Data across the industry conflicts on this issue, but a chart from the 2016 ISTR fits the consensus: attackers are sending fewer emails to smaller lists, but the number of phishing campaigns and their impact have jumped. As any email marketer will tell you, a custom email sent to a smaller list will often outperform a generic email sent to a massive list. Criminals are beginning to understand this principle. A custom email can include more details that resonate with recipients and earn more trust, thereby making people more like to “convert.” The main difference is that marketers want to convert you into a buyer and criminals want to convert you into a victim. 6 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved. I [email protected] I (800) 650 – 8930 Trends in Phishing Emails 2. Higher infection rates Phishing tactics have improved greatly from the Nigerian prince emails of the 1990s. The emails can be very convincing. “The median time for the first Nearly one-third of all phishing messages reviewed user of a phishing campaign for the Verizon 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report to the malicious email (DBIR) were opened, and a terrifying 12% were open clicked. This represents a big jump in open rate for is 1 minute, 40 seconds.” phishing emails compared to previous years, and a slight rise in the click rate. Verizon 2016 DBIR This suggests that phishing emails are improving in sophistication. The attackers are sharpening their skills to persuade more people to open the message and click the link or attachment. “The median time for the first user of a phishing campaign to open the malicious email is 1 minute, 40 seconds.” Verizon 2016 DBIR. Malicious emails can also be difficult to spot. Attackers constantly change tactics to avoid detection by humans and spam filters. In a quiz that tested the ability of business users to detect phishing emails, only 6% of respondents (out of more than 50,000) could identify all of the malicious messages. On average, they identified only 35% of the bad emails, according to McAfee’s report, Phishing Deceives the Masses. In short: phishing emails can be very effective and their tactics are improving. 7 © 2016 Calyptix Security Corporation. All rights reserved.