Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Careers and People
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
Email Security Tools Try to Keep Up with Threats
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
JTEmailSec
JTEmailSec,
 User Rank: Apprentice
5/29/2018 | 2:06:36 PM
The challenge is human behavior - not the technology
Ultimately there's not much that technology can do when people are going to click through to malicious websites, go into spam to open russian bride offers, or wire someone money without using MFA. 

The tools are really powerful, filter in the 99.9%+ of spam or even emails that are questionable.

 
BrianN060
BrianN060,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/10/2018 | 4:04:36 PM
We made email the vulnerability it is today
Thanks for the article on BEC.  

As mentioned, attachments were a principle source of compromise; but no longer necessary, because of other features added for our convenience.  We still refer to these communications as email (electronic mail); though the reference to letters exchanged by post retains little relevance. 

Each letter was an item traveling from one address to another; each email is packet-ized and the packets disseminated to countless waypoints to be copied and forwarded to countless more; in a process that only ends when the addressee (an IP address node device, not a person), informs the internet that at least one copy of each packet in the parcel has arrived at its destination - effectively, emails are broadcast.  Thinking of email, in terms of postal mail (with all our assumptions and experience with that), was a misconception from the get-go.  Maybe "pradio" (personal radio transmitter/receiver), would have given us a clearer picture of what we would be dealing with. 

Postal mail attachments were harmless (unless dipped in poison), at least until any forms were filled out and returned.  Email attachments can carry malware, but imbedded  images (blocks of binary we take to be interpreted as a picture), can serve just as well.  Yes, we can be warned that "images were prevented... "; but legit senders want us to see them, and we want to see what "they" sent - so we revert to the postal mail assumptions that the sender is who they say they are, and download the images. 

What would today's email be without hyperlinks - a lot less of a vulnerability.  With a single click, we can be whisked away to who knows where, or agree to who knows what.   

Maybe the way to make email safer is to make it less 21st century.  At least with business emails, treat the process of sending and accepting them more as we would have with business letters:  Be a little more formal.  Always include specifics in the subject line.  Be more sparing in how many emails you send (pretend it cost you postage and the pay of a secretary to take dictation, correct your grammar, and type it on to your company's stationary).  Offer to send attachments - if they request them in a reply. 

If we keep in mind that email is not mail; yet treat it a little more as if it were, we'd all have less to worry about. 


Edge-DRsplash-10-edge-articles
I Smell a RAT! New Cybersecurity Threats for the Crypto Industry
David Trepp, Partner, IT Assurance with accounting and advisory firm BPM LLP,  7/9/2021
News
Attacks on Kaseya Servers Led to Ransomware in Less Than 2 Hours
Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer,  7/7/2021
Commentary
It's in the Game (but It Shouldn't Be)
Tal Memran, Cybersecurity Expert, CYE,  7/9/2021
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
Everything You Need to Know About DNS Attacks
It's important to understand DNS, potential attacks against it, and the tools and techniques required to defend DNS infrastructure. This report answers all the questions you were afraid to ask. Domain Name Service (DNS) is a critical part of any organization's digital infrastructure, but it's also one of the least understood. DNS is designed to be invisible to business professionals, IT stakeholders, and many security professionals, but DNS's threat surface is large and widely targeted. Attackers are causing a great deal of damage with an array of attacks such as denial of service, DNS cache poisoning, DNS hijackin, DNS tunneling, and DNS dangling. They are using DNS infrastructure to take control of inbound and outbound communications and preventing users from accessing the applications they are looking for. To stop attacks on DNS, security teams need to shore up the organization's security hygiene around DNS infrastructure, implement controls such as DNSSEC, and monitor DNS traffic
Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2023-33196
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Craft is a CMS for creating custom digital experiences. Cross site scripting (XSS) can be triggered by review volumes. This issue has been fixed in version 4.4.7.
CVE-2023-33185
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Django-SES is a drop-in mail backend for Django. The django_ses library implements a mail backend for Django using AWS Simple Email Service. The library exports the `SESEventWebhookView class` intended to receive signed requests from AWS to handle email bounces, subscriptions, etc. These requests ar...
CVE-2023-33187
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Highlight is an open source, full-stack monitoring platform. Highlight may record passwords on customer deployments when a password html input is switched to `type="text"` via a javascript "Show Password" button. This differs from the expected behavior which always obfuscates `ty...
CVE-2023-33194
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Craft is a CMS for creating custom digital experiences on the web.The platform does not filter input and encode output in Quick Post validation error message, which can deliver an XSS payload. Old CVE fixed the XSS in label HTML but didn’t fix it when clicking save. This issue was...
CVE-2023-2879
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
GDSDB infinite loop in Wireshark 4.0.0 to 4.0.5 and 3.6.0 to 3.6.13 allows denial of service via packet injection or crafted capture file