Shane Chambers No Comments

DHL Phishing Campaign Found to Contain New Strain of Malware

Every year, the number of phishing scams seems to be increasing, with the malware-ridden emails getting continually more sophisticated and convincing. The latest global phishing campaign purporting to be from international courier giants DHL has been tricking users into opening a fake PDF attachment – and subsequently unleashed a previously unseen piece of malware to wreak havoc on their PCs.

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Shane Chambers No Comments

Human Error Is Still Greatest Security Threat Faced by Irish Businesses, According to Experts

New research from DataSolutions, an Irish IT solutions provider, has revealed that a majority (60%) of senior IT decision makers consider human error to be the greatest threat facing Irish businesses and organisations at the moment. This is consistent with results of similar surveys in other countries such as the US or UK, as cyber criminals evolve to target end-users and take advantage of improperly-trained staff instead of trying to bypass or hack complex technical security measures. The survey also revealed that 93% of respondents claim that they have a formal cyber security and defense strategy in place to help navigate today’s online threat environment, particularly in a post-GDPR world.


Cyber criminals are becoming increasingly smart and how they target organisations, targeting un-training staff instead of complex technological security measures

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Shane Chambers No Comments

Less Businesses Reporting Ransomware Despite Increase In Attacks

It seems that everyone in the cyber security sphere is talking about ransomware these days. Last year, attacks such as WannaCry, NotPetya and BadRabbit took the business world by storm, costing billions in damages. Ransomware is by no means a new threat (it has been around since at least 2005), but it is one of the fastest growing and most costly. Cyber crime is constantly changing, and criminals keep creating news ways to steal money. Ransomware has gotten increasingly sophisticated since 2005, but the people using and deploying it haven’t necessarily – now some cyber criminals are making more money selling high-tech ransomware strains to non-technical criminals than if they were to conduct the attacks themselves. The result is that more and more ‘hackers’ have access to ransomware and need very little technical know-how to operate it, leading to more and more ransomware attacks each year. It may come as a surprise, then, to hear that the FBI received less reports of ransomware attacks in 2017 than in 2016 and 2015, despite the increase in attacks.


The FBI reported just 1,783 reports of ransomware attacks in 2017, compared to 2,673 in 2016 and 2,453 in 2015.

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Shane Chambers No Comments

An Post Suffers Data Breach, Leaks Details of 8,000 Customers

An Post has admitted to a data breach which resulted in the data of up to 8,000 customers being provided to a third party without their knowledge or consent. The breach took place between April 2016 and September 2017, and involves the data of customers who used An Post’s online mail redirection service. An Post discovered that it had inadvertently shared these details with a Dublin-based marketing firm, Precision Marketing Information Ltd, who updated users’ details with companies they had previously done business with.


Up to 8,000 customers’ data was sent to a third party marketing company, allowing businesses that had previously contacted them to market to them at their new addresses

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