A quick Saturday digest of cybersecurity news articles from other sources.
IC3 Releases Alert on Gift Card Scams
08/02/2017 10:08 PM EDT Original release date: August 02, 2017
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released an alert warning consumers of music gift card scams. This type of scam targets victims, gains their confidence, and tricks them into providing gift card information.
To stay safer online, review the IC3 alert on Online Scammers Require Payment via Music Application Gift Cards and the US-CERT Tip on Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks.
IRS Warns Tax Professionals of New Scam to Steal Passwords
08/07/2017 03:30 PM EDT Original release date: August 07, 2017
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), acting in concert with state tax agencies and the tax industry, has issued an IRS Security Summit Alert for tax professionals to beware of a new phishing email scam. Scam operators often use fraudulent e-mails to entice their targets to reveal login credentials.
US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review the IRS Alert and US-CERT Security Tip ST04-014.
Microsoft issues out-of-band security updates for Outlook, Office
Naked Security – If you haven’t picked up these updates, now is a good time to do them.
There were a number of out-of-band updates released on July 27. This update applies to vulnerabilities specifically Outlook and Office Click-to-run. Several of the vulnerability updates prevent remote code executions (RCE) in Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016, as well as Office 2010 and 2016 Click-To-Run.
FTC Releases Alert on Government Grant Scams
08/08/2017 08:30 PM EDT Original release date: August 08, 2017
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released an alert on government grant scams. In these schemes, scammers pose as government officials to get consumers to send them money. Anytime someone asks you to pay money to get money, stop and think twice.
US-CERT encourages consumers to refer to the FTC Alert and the US-CERT Tip on Real-World Warnings Keep You Safe Online for more information.
Watch out for Emotet, the trojan that’s nearly a worm
Emotet arrives as a malicious email attachment and tries to steal your online banking credentials
Self-hosted search option is a new approach to bursting the filter bubble
Tired of being tracked by Google? Here’s an open-source, self-hosted search aggregator might be a good way both of avoiding being tracked and getting away from the echo chamber
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com