DMARC 2.0? New BIMI standard will help fight spoofing and phishing

Major email service providers are teaming up with large corporations like health insurers, financial service providers and social media giants to develop a new standard that will let commercial email senders securely display their logo next to the “from” name when a message is in a user’s inbox. Brand Indicators for Message Identification, or BIMI, aims to bolster sagging public trust in email, and thereby increase customer engagement with commercial marketing messages. But senders will have to use industry-standard email verification measures in order to leverage BIMI, and the logos will also appear on individual emails from employees of the sending company, as well as mass marketing messages. As a result, BIMI, will also help combat spoofing and phishing messages, according to Patrick Peterson, the founder and executive chairman of email security outfit Agari — one of the new standard’s authors. “We’re putting the trust back into email,” he told […]

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Fooling Face Recognition with Infrared Light

Yet another development in the arms race between facial recognition systems and facial-recognition-system foolers. BoingBoing post….
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Tax prep tools lag in DMARC implementation, advocacy group says

With tax season underway, a cybersecurity advocacy group is warning that vendors of popular tax preparation tools may be unprepared to protect users from phishing scams. Four out of the eight most popular tax preparation software products don’t employ basic protections against email spoofing, according to testing by the cybersecurity nonprofit Global Cyber Alliance. GCA tested the domains of the popular programs to check what settings they employ under the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) protocol. DMARC is an industry standard designed to detect and prevent email spoofing. GCA’s findings, released last week, are as follows: Reject: Liberty Tax Quarantine: Credit Karma, Jackson Hewitt and Tax Slayer None: Free Tax USA and Turbo Tax No policy: H&R Block and TaxAct DMARC has three levels of protection against emails that try to hijack a particular domain. If an organization employs the “reject” policy — the highest setting — a spoofed […]

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Office 365 Takes Aim at Spoofers but Users See Warnings About Fraudulent Messages

Microsoft upgraded their EOP anti-spoofing capabilities inside Office 365, which is good, but they didn’t tell anyone. The first users knew was when they started to receive messages stamped with “the sender failed our fraud detection checks” – something that is never assuring. This only applies to ATP customers, but it’s not the first time Microsoft has failed to communicate important news.

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With Spoofed Calls on the Rise, FCC Seeks New ID Authentication Program

Spoofing a phone number is not a new concept, you probably get several calls from them a day, but with the accessibility of VoIP solutions and open source software spoofing a phone number is a breeze.
Telemarketers, robocalls, spammers, scammers, … Continue reading With Spoofed Calls on the Rise, FCC Seeks New ID Authentication Program

Why would someone who’s really calling from my area use the 1- long-distance prefix? [on hold]

This is a semi-followup to this question on spam calls

Similar the OP in that post, I’ve been receiving spam calls with the form 1-ABC-DEF-WXYZ, where my phone number is ABC-DEF-GHIJ. I’ve never seen a legitimate caller from… Continue reading Why would someone who’s really calling from my area use the 1- long-distance prefix? [on hold]

Researchers uncover 4G LTE exploits that can be used to spy, spoof and cause panic

Vulnerabilities in a common wireless telecommunications standard could allow hackers to send a fake emergency alert message to almost anyone’s smartphone. Researchers from Purdue University and the University of Iowa say they’ve discovered 10 new vulnerabilities in the 4G LTE protocol that can disrupt victims’ devices in several ways. They present the new findings in a paper published last month that showcases a tool they developed in order to detect such vulnerabilities. Among the new attacks, the researchers highlight an authentication relay attack, which they say allows an attacker to connect to an LTE network while spoofing another existing device’s identity and location. This is done without having legitimate credentials. “Through this attack the adversary can poison the location of the victim device in the core networks, thus allowing setting up a false alibi or planting fake evidence during a criminal investigation,” the paper says. The researchers explain that the 4G LTE protocol […]

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Feds still dragging in DMARC configuration

It’s been more than a month since a mandatory Department of Homeland Security deadline passed for federal agencies to adopt security measures that stop attackers spoofing email — but more than a third have still failed to do so, according to an analysis of public records. What’s arguably worse is those that have implemented the measure called DMARC — Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance — have in many cases misconfigured it, meaning they remain exposed to spoofing. Federal IT specialists “aren’t picking up on the issue of subdomains,” explained Ian Breeze, a product manager at Easy Solutions, a vendor that provides software and advice to organizations seeking to implement DMARC, “They’re leaving their email subdomains open to fraud.” How DMARC works DMARC works by creating a public record that email systems can check to determine whether a message sender is in fact authorized to transmit on behalf of a […]

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