Auto Forwarding Phishing Attacks

Malicious email phishing schemes have been evolving since the early ‘90s. These attacks have been progressively advancing, focusing efforts on a variety of vulnerable groups and raising the stakes. It used to be that these attacks just focused on gaining access to free internet, for low-risk usage, now these attacks have the ability to access your company’s sensitive data and wreak havoc on your business.

What You Need to Know

One phishing attack that you should beware of is called Auto Forwarding. It’s an attack where a malicious actor gains secure access to your email account. By gaining access to an email account within your company, you lose access fast. Because of this, attackers can make lateral movements to compromise other accounts within your organization.

What makes this phishing scheme different from other email phishing attacks is the following:

• Once the threat actor accesses your account, they enable auto-forwarding to an outside account. As a result, allowing them unlimited access to all communications you and your employees send and receive. This allows the attacker to analyze behaviors to expertly craft convincing phishing emails.

This could assist with compromising other accounts in your company and provide access to sensitive data and confidential information, like bank and financial information. These attacks are growing more common and challenging to combat, even after overriding with password changes, but it is certainly not impossible to protect you and your business.

Four Steps to Stay Safe

1. Perform routine health inspections – Make sure that you are practicing healthy servicing to your email infrastructure. Keeping systems updated, changing passwords regularly (and ensuring they are strong) are starting points. Second, doing regular system audits can help identify phishing attacks or other potential breaches early.
2. Stay vigilant – if you receive questionable communication from an internal email account, ignore it. When money requests are involved, you can lose more than just money. In conclusion, don’t hesitate to reach out to your staff to verify validity.
3. Report – If you or one of your employees has become a victim of one of these cyberattacks, be sure to inform your internal IT department or your Managed IT Service Provider, immediately. These experts will be able to analyze the compromised account(s) and determine the source and the best solutions.
4. If you do not already have an IT service provider, contact 1R Technologies today for a free consultation and to learn more about how our services can help protect your business.

For more information on how to keep your email safe from phishing attacks, contact 1R Technologies today for a free IT assessment.