7 ms·

Followed immediately by HR sending an unsigned email about critical deadlines for benefits or something, telling you to click a link and/or a PDF attachment.

kovrik 8y ago
So the real issue here is not emails or autoresponders, but lack of IT security knowledge among employees. Hence, do (mandatory) trainings or something.
- Moodles 8y ago
  I'm not sure there's much evidence that it works though. Probably more effective is having employees use yubikeys or something.
gizmo686 8y ago
The most obvious phishing email I ever received was from some random domain informing me I had not take the required anti-phishing tracking and to please click the link to take it. Like a good employee, I sent the email to our spam@ account and didn't give it any more thought. A month later, my manager comes in and informs me that the anti-phishing training is not optional and I had a week to complete it.
- cwyers 8y ago
  That's amazing.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  At a large company, shouldn't someone be monitoring the address where people report phishing, who can tell you if a reported message is legitimate? I work at a small company, so I don't know if this is how any IRL organizations work, but it's how I assumed the procedure went.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Anecdote time: At one of my previous jobs, there was this big part of intranet that was used by sysadmins, and various other people from fields other than software development. My team didn't have to deal with it, so we weren't even aware of it, much less had access to it. One day, however, someone wanted me to review a document from there. I bounced off the "Unauthorized" error, and dutifully followed the instructions to fill in an appropriate box with a justification, and send a request to be granted access. The issue wasn't critical, so I didn't pester anyone about it, just patiently waited for the access, re-filing my request every other month. Many months later, with me still not getting access, I eventually brought this up to my boss, who then smiled and told me that this access request form literally goes to /dev/null. Apparently after some software migration, no one bothered to connect this to anything.
- kiallmacinnes 8y ago
  Back when I worked at HP, our anti-phishing training even had a joke in it about how, yes, all HP URLs look exactly like the phising URLs they were describing... What's with https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/ https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/? Why?
maxxxxx 8y ago
In my company a lot of systems like HR have gone from internal servers to cloud so E-mails come from a lot of different URLs as sender. I consider myself pretty savvy but if a mail looks halfways plausible I don't really know how to tell if it's legitimate or not. The only way to fix this would be to sign E-mails so we can verify authenticity. I think it shouldn't be too hard to write an Outlook plugin to do this.
- kovrik 8y ago
  If I am not sure whether an email is legitimate or not, then I just ignore it assuming that if it is something real and important, then the other party will find a way to contact me (send another email, call me, approach me in person etc.).
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    With stuff like information about health insurance or 401k information there won't be any follow-up but it's very important to me.
    - wahern 8y ago
      Those are easy. Just log into the portal directly. Imagine if someone from your benefits provider called and asked for your social security number or other PII for confirmation. Would you give it to them? I hope not. You should ask (as I always do) for their name and extension and tell them that you'll return their call through a published telephone number. Never once have I had someone balk at that, and I've done it countless times for many years. For a link to a benefits provider, it's trivial to log into the portal through a known good domain and look around for whatever piece of information or news they were trying to communicate. The hard issues come with all the random services HR contracts for stuff like harassment training, etc. If I can't corroborate a link myself then as a last resort I can simply ask HR (or w'ever department) directly, or as previously said just ignore it and wait for someone to say something. At some point the usage of so many third-party services is just an insane security risk. It's almost comical when the corp security team runs a phishing test and on the same day you get a half-dozen e-mail messages from other departments with twice as many links to random domains. At some point you're just like, "fsck 'em" and have half a mind to not bother caring anymore. But it's not just their security on the line, it's yours, too. I still use mutt for personal e-mail so maybe this is all easier for me. I've yet to become accustomed to hidden links or embedded multimedia in e-mail.
sct202 8y ago
Our security team makes their phishing emails look way too professional.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  Targeted phishing for corporate espionnage would look very professional. Even regular bank phishing is getting very pro these days. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/voice-phishing-scams-are-getting-more-clever/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/voice-phishing-scams-are...

kovrik 8y ago

So the real issue here is not emails or autoresponders, but lack of IT security knowledge among employees. Hence, do (mandatory) trainings or something.

Moodles 8y ago
I'm not sure there's much evidence that it works though. Probably more effective is having employees use yubikeys or something.

gizmo686 8y ago

The most obvious phishing email I ever received was from some random domain informing me I had not take the required anti-phishing tracking and to please click the link to take it. Like a good employee, I sent the email to our spam@ account and didn't give it any more thought. A month later, my manager comes in and informs me that the anti-phishing training is not optional and I had a week to complete it.

cwyers 8y ago
That's amazing.
Wowfunhappy 8y ago
At a large company, shouldn't someone be monitoring the address where people report phishing, who can tell you if a reported message is legitimate? I work at a small company, so I don't know if this is how any IRL organizations work, but it's how I assumed the procedure went.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Anecdote time: At one of my previous jobs, there was this big part of intranet that was used by sysadmins, and various other people from fields other than software development. My team didn't have to deal with it, so we weren't even aware of it, much less had access to it. One day, however, someone wanted me to review a document from there. I bounced off the "Unauthorized" error, and dutifully followed the instructions to fill in an appropriate box with a justification, and send a request to be granted access. The issue wasn't critical, so I didn't pester anyone about it, just patiently waited for the access, re-filing my request every other month. Many months later, with me still not getting access, I eventually brought this up to my boss, who then smiled and told me that this access request form literally goes to /dev/null. Apparently after some software migration, no one bothered to connect this to anything.
kiallmacinnes 8y ago
Back when I worked at HP, our anti-phishing training even had a joke in it about how, yes, all HP URLs look exactly like the phising URLs they were describing... What's with https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/ https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/? Why?

maxxxxx 8y ago

In my company a lot of systems like HR have gone from internal servers to cloud so E-mails come from a lot of different URLs as sender. I consider myself pretty savvy but if a mail looks halfways plausible I don't really know how to tell if it's legitimate or not. The only way to fix this would be to sign E-mails so we can verify authenticity. I think it shouldn't be too hard to write an Outlook plugin to do this.

kovrik 8y ago
If I am not sure whether an email is legitimate or not, then I just ignore it assuming that if it is something real and important, then the other party will find a way to contact me (send another email, call me, approach me in person etc.).
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  With stuff like information about health insurance or 401k information there won't be any follow-up but it's very important to me.
  - wahern 8y ago
    Those are easy. Just log into the portal directly. Imagine if someone from your benefits provider called and asked for your social security number or other PII for confirmation. Would you give it to them? I hope not. You should ask (as I always do) for their name and extension and tell them that you'll return their call through a published telephone number. Never once have I had someone balk at that, and I've done it countless times for many years. For a link to a benefits provider, it's trivial to log into the portal through a known good domain and look around for whatever piece of information or news they were trying to communicate. The hard issues come with all the random services HR contracts for stuff like harassment training, etc. If I can't corroborate a link myself then as a last resort I can simply ask HR (or w'ever department) directly, or as previously said just ignore it and wait for someone to say something. At some point the usage of so many third-party services is just an insane security risk. It's almost comical when the corp security team runs a phishing test and on the same day you get a half-dozen e-mail messages from other departments with twice as many links to random domains. At some point you're just like, "fsck 'em" and have half a mind to not bother caring anymore. But it's not just their security on the line, it's yours, too. I still use mutt for personal e-mail so maybe this is all easier for me. I've yet to become accustomed to hidden links or embedded multimedia in e-mail.

sct202 8y ago

Our security team makes their phishing emails look way too professional.

jobigoud 8y ago
Targeted phishing for corporate espionnage would look very professional. Even regular bank phishing is getting very pro these days. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/voice-phishing-scams-are-getting-more-clever/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/voice-phishing-scams-are...