Hacking Humans
Who is winning the scam game?
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Show notes
This week, hosts of N2K CyberWire Maria Varmazis and Dave Bittner alongside Joe Carrigan are discussing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. If you thought you could escape chicken talk, you we're wrong, this week Joe shares some more updates on his chickens. Joe’s got two stories this week, one on a New Jersey man arrested while attempting to collect $800,000 in gold as part of a widespread scam targeting elderly victims, and the second is on a new Google-tracked threat group using social engineering and phishing tactics to infiltrate BPOs and steal corporate data for extortion. Maria’s story is on a conversation she had with Sean Colicchio, highlighting how trusting human instincts, slowing down, and balancing security training can help individuals and organizations better defend against social engineering attacks. Dave’s got the story on a surge in traffic violation scams now using QR codes in phishing texts to trick victims, alongside ten hard-stop rules emphasizing verification, avoiding links or inbound requests, and slowing down to prevent falling for increasingly sophisticated scams. Our Catch of the Day comes from Reddit, where a user questioned a supposed “Google Play Console partnership” email, and the community quickly flagged it as a likely scam—citing red flags.
Resources and links to stories:
Indian in New Jersey on work visa arrested in gold scam, nabbed when he was going to collect $800,000 in gold
Google Warns of New Threat Group Targeting BPOs and Helpdesks
Traffic violation scams switch to QR codes in new phishing texts
[Nepal] Is this “Google Play Console partnership” email a scam?
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@n2k.com.