Month: March 2019

There is a growing trend these days of what is know as “sextortion”. You receive an email that addresses you by name and knows one of your online passwords – and even may include the last three digits of your phone number. Now that the sender has your attention, the e-mail then proceeds to claim that malware placed on a porn site you’ve visited and that they will expose you – unless you pay up. These so-called “sextortion” scams are on the rise, fueled by the recent data breaches that have released personal information into the wild. For example...

For a large enterprise like Stellenbosch University phishing attacks are the most common cybercrime. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we were all inundated with spam emails, selling everything from fake pharmaceuticals to cheap perfumes. With spam, cybercriminals use a blanket approach sending emails to as many people as possible, hoping a few gullible customers will be funding further spam emails. General “shotgun” phishing is still a problem today, but the past 18 months have seen a rise in a more sinister form of cyberattack, spearphishing, which is much more targeted to an individual or an enterprise’s email...