You may have heard the terms phishing, smishing or vishing before, but what exactly do they mean? At their core, all three terms are a type of financial fraud which tricks unsuspecting victims into giving out sensitive personal information, handing over money or installing malware onto their device. The only difference between each term is the channel via which you can be targeted; phishing refers to scam emails, smishing refers to scam text or WhatsApp messages and vishing takes place over the phone. Phishing The most common phishing method encourages victims to visit a malicious website through a fake email message, which appears to be sent from a legitimate company or source (e.g. from a bank, HMRC, a delivery company or the NHS). For example, you might receive an email which appears to be from an organisation who you’re familiar with, asking you to click on a link. At this point you will be taken to a webpage on which you’re asked to submit sensitive data, such as passwords, user
Introduction These days, when we think of nation-state level damage, we immediately think of the nation-state level actor that must be responsible for it. While most attacks against a nation’s sensitive networks are indeed the work of other governments, the truth is that there is no magic shield that prevents a non-state sponsored entity from creating the same kind of havoc, and harming critical infrastructure in order to make a statement. In this piece, we present an analysis of a successful politically motivated attack on Iranian infrastructure that is suspected to be carried by a non-state sponsored actor. This specific attack happened to be directed at Iran, but it could as easily have happened in New York or Berlin. We’ll look at some of the technical details and expose the actor behind the attack — thereby linking it to several other politically motivated attacks from earlier years. Key Findings On July 9th and 10th, 2021 Iranian Railways and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Dev