Resources

Guide

Scattered Canary Threat Dossier

Business email compromise (BEC) has continued to grow into a billion-dollar industry as cybercriminals turn to it as their preferred scam. But with the West African gang we’ve named Scattered Canary, we have deeper insight into how BEC is connected to the rest of cybercrime, and why it has grown in recent years. Download the threat dossier to learn: How Scattered Canary grew from a one-man startup...
Guide

Scarlet Widow Part 2: BEC Bitcoin Laundry—Scam, Rinse, Repeat

While many cybercriminal gangs scam medium-sized and large corporations, Agari has now uncovered and documented the practices of a Nigeria-based scammer group, dubbed Scarlet Widow, that has evolved a different strategy focused on more vulnerable sectors such as school districts, universities, and nonprofits. In this report, we uncover: How Scarlet Widow transitioned from romance scams to tax...
Guide

Cosmic Lynx Threat Dossier: The Rise of Russian BEC

Cosmic Lynx is a Russia-based BEC cybercriminal organization that has significantly impacted the email threat landscape with sophisticated, high-dollar phishing attacks. In this threat dossier, you’ll discover key details about Cosmic Lynx, including: How Cosmic targets global corporations with incredibly sophisticated BEC attacks How Cosmic Lynx exploits DMARC controls to impersonate corporate...
Guide

Threat Intelligence Brief: The Geography of BEC

Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a worldwide scourge affecting more than three-fourths of the world’s economies. Around the globe, BEC cybercriminals operate with impunity to steal $26 billion each year. The Agari Cyber Intelligence Division conducted nearly 10,000 active engagements with BEC threat actors and captured the scope of BEC’s global footprint and trends. In this report, you’ll...
Guide

Ransomware: Exploring the Leading Cyber Extortion Tool

Ransomware has evolved from targeting individuals to extorting large sums of money from businesses with the threat of releasing or destroying their private company data. This type of email-based attack can cause tremendous financial losses as well as reputation damage that’s difficult and expensive to repair. Read our ransomware white paper now for insights from Agari Chief Scientist Markus...
Guide

Domains Associated with Exaggerated Lion BEC Campaigns

Below is the list of domains associated with Exaggerated Lion BEC Campaigns. You can access the PDF version of this list by clicking the "Download PDF Version" button at the top of this page. 1secure-portal-server.online admin-office-exec-ssl-secure-server-portal-exec.management admin-office-exec-ssl-secured-server-portal-exec.management admin-server-apps.management admin-servers-apps.management...
Guide

2020 Election Security

The 2020 Election Security Poll delves into the issue of election security from the voters’ perspective. Findings include: 69% of registered voters say that foreign interference in 2020 U.S. presidential election campaigns is a threat to U.S. democracy 59% of respondents said receiving a fake/phishing email from one campaign would negatively impact their donation to other 2020 U.S. presidential...
Blog

Customer Phishing Protection Couldn’t Be Easier with PhishLabs' Digital Risk Protection

It’s not news that cybercrime is a constant battle—large enterprises and small businesses everywhere are susceptible to a myriad of advanced email threats and socially engineered attacks , such as executive or brand impersonation. According to IC3’s Internet Crime Report, over $44 million in losses in 2021 were a direct result of malicious phishing and advanced email scams. Despite billions having...
Blog

Top Social Media Threats Targeting the Retail Industry

Social media threats targeting enterprises more than doubled last year. Attacks on the retail industry specifically have grown, as threat actors are targeting victims with impersonation and counterfeit ad campaigns. Purchasing behavior is increasingly influenced by social media, making it an attractive vector for these kinds of campaigns. The tendency of social media users to consume information...
Blog

2022 Data Privacy Week – Education and Inspiration

As the world becomes more and more dependent on online resources to complete daily tasks, such as work meetings, grocery shopping, and even exercising, the risk of cyber attacks, data breaches, and information stealing increases. If you’re not already protecting your personal information online, now is the perfect time to start, as Data Privacy Weeks kicks off today. Led by the National Cyber...
Blog

Six Steps to Email Security Best Practice

To help IT teams define a robust email security policy and determine what’s required from an email security solution, we’ve put together a new six-step guide.
Blog

Common Phishing Email Attacks | Examples & Descriptions

What does a phishing email look like? We've compiled phishing email examples to help show what a spoofed email looks like to prevent against phishing attacks. Brand deception phishing is the most common example of phishing people will come across. Brand deception phishing occurs when an attacker mimics a trusted company in an email and asks someone for their personal information like credit card...
Blog

What Is Email Phishing? Protect Your Enterprise

Phishing emails can steal sensitive data and cost companies' their reputation. However, protecting a company from these scammers doesn't need to be difficult. What Is Email Phishing? Phishing is when an attacker mimics a trusted person or brand in an attempt to steal sensitive information, or gain a foothold inside a company network. While phishing emails are by far the most popular, these attacks...
Blog

TLS Email Encryption: What It Is & How to Check if Your Email Is Using It

What exactly is TLS when it comes to email encryption? TLS, or cybersecurity protocol Transport Layer Security first developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), was designed to establish secure communications that provide both privacy and data security. Originally created from another encryption protocol called Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, you may hear others use SSL and TLS...
Blog

Inside a Compromised Account: How Cybercriminals Use Credential Phishing to Further BEC Scams

Why would a cybercriminal spend time developing malware when he can simply trick unsuspecting users into handing over their passwords? Why would a threat actor spend her money and resources on ransomware, when she can get that same information through a compromised account? It’s a good question, and exactly what the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division wanted to discover. In a growing trend known as...
Blog

How to Implement the BIMI-Selector Header for Multiple Brands

Wondering what Brand Indicators for Message Identification actually means? Here, we’ll cover the basics of BIMI, what the BIMI-selector header is, what it does, whether you need it, and how to implement it. But first, do you really need the BIMI-selector header? In most cases, you only need the BIMI-selector header if you want to support multiple logos for multiple brands or subdomains. Otherwise...
Blog

Protecting Digital Communications During the Digital Transformation: A Look Back at Trust 2021

While we’re all Zoomed, Webexed and Teamed out after thirteen months of the pandemic, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the situation. They know we’re heavily relying on digital communications and they’re sending fake emails, pretending to be your boss. They’re sending fake invoices, pretending to be your vendor. They’re even sending fake requests for gift cards, on the off-chance that...
Blog

Agari Report: New BEC Scam 7X More Costly Than Average, Bigger Phish Start Angling In

Sophisticated new threat actors, evolving phishing tactics, and a $800,000 business email compromise (BEC) scam in the second half of 2020 all signal big trouble ahead, according to new analysis from the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division (ACID). As captured in our H1 2021 Email Fraud & Identity Deception Trends Report , successful attacks on Magellan Health, GoDaddy, and the SolarWinds "hack of...
Blog

Cosmic Lynx Returns in 2021 with Updated Tricks

In July 2020, we published a report on a Russian-based BEC group we called Cosmic Lynx . In that report , we described the tactics used by the group, which included its targeting of senior executives at large companies with a global footprint and how it uses mergers and acquisitions (M&A) themes in its BEC email lures. Shortly after we published the report, we saw a significant decrease in Cosmic...
Blog

Email Security: Agari Delivers a Whole New Level of Actionable Insight to Outpace Threat Actors

CISOs and their teams are about to get some serious performance enhancers in their high-stakes race against email security threats. According to the FBI, phishing campaigns, business email compromise (BEC) scams, and other advanced email attacks have resulted in $26 billion in business losses over the course of three years. Then 2020 happened. With 75 million corporate employees even now still...