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> I found after creating a LinkedIn account, attacks went up on my account 12x. I'm curious to know more about what you're doing to quantify this as an individ

> I found after creating a LinkedIn account, attacks went up on my account 12x. I'm curious to know more about what you're doing to quantify this as an individual–I think I have a fairly sophisticated personal security posture and have implemented various business infosec measures professionally, but I'm not sure I have a great way of measuring how many attacks are targeted at me day to day, beyond a sort of vague sense of "this month I'm noticing more {frequent|targeted|sophisticated} attention".

water9 3y ago
Previously, he had zero now he has one and so he rounded from infinity. Otherwise he did exactly what he’s making fun of I his post.
balls187 3y ago
If I were someone of note who was concerned about increasing likelihood of attacks targeting me, I wouldn’t answer that question, doubly so if I was security conscious.
pierat 3y ago
In my case, my estimation is a simple count. Prior to using my email, I was getting 2 targeted attacks per week to my email. After making an acct on LinkedIn with resume, was seeing 25-30 attacks per week. I didn't make any attempt to determine the classification of attack, or its complexity. It was a simple dumb count.
- crustaceansoup 3y ago
  I had a suspicion that phishers were using LinkedIn to build an employee directory to attack at work (using names and guessing our email address pattern), so I created a honeypot to test that: a company email along with a LinkedIn profile for a fake employee. Sure enough the honeypot mailbox started to get targeted by the same spear phishing emails our employees get pretty soon after.
dhosek 3y ago
Most of the attempts that I had were flagged as spam so I didn’t notice. The one that almost caught me was a simple email allegedly from the CEO asking if I had a minute. I was working at a small enough company that it wouldn’t be out of the question for the CEO to email me and I replied, sure. The next email was, fortunately, a clumsy attempt at fraud, asking me to buy some Xbox gift cards for a client, which made me look a little closer and notice that the email address hidden by the email client behind the CEO’s name was at a Russian ISP, so I dumped them into spam and posted a warning on Slack. Something less clumsily targeted might have caught someone (e.g., to do a test booking on our site, or open some tech window). That said, LinkedIn is useful enough to me that I’m willing to leave that window open, although it would be nice if company email addresses were less easily guessed.
- Larrikin 3y ago
  So the simplest most common email scam for anyone with a work email. It's not sophisticated or targeted, if anything you do matters to anyone you will get an email like that. It's really on you for not checking the email instead of replying to basically a horny single in your area that could maybe give you a promotion.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    Until recently, Microsoft Outlook idiotically hid the sender's email address when reading a message, showing only the display name. As it's the part that can be authenticated (DKIM etc) a stronger word than "idiotically" is also appropriate.
    - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
      DKIM etc cannot authenticate the email address. It can authenticate the sender domain (which is the main win anyway). Only signed emails can be authenticated against the sender.
      - rcxdude 3y ago

water9 3y ago

Previously, he had zero now he has one and so he rounded from infinity. Otherwise he did exactly what he’s making fun of I his post.

balls187 3y ago

If I were someone of note who was concerned about increasing likelihood of attacks targeting me, I wouldn’t answer that question, doubly so if I was security conscious.

pierat 3y ago

In my case, my estimation is a simple count. Prior to using my email, I was getting 2 targeted attacks per week to my email. After making an acct on LinkedIn with resume, was seeing 25-30 attacks per week. I didn't make any attempt to determine the classification of attack, or its complexity. It was a simple dumb count.

crustaceansoup 3y ago
I had a suspicion that phishers were using LinkedIn to build an employee directory to attack at work (using names and guessing our email address pattern), so I created a honeypot to test that: a company email along with a LinkedIn profile for a fake employee. Sure enough the honeypot mailbox started to get targeted by the same spear phishing emails our employees get pretty soon after.

dhosek 3y ago

Most of the attempts that I had were flagged as spam so I didn’t notice. The one that almost caught me was a simple email allegedly from the CEO asking if I had a minute. I was working at a small enough company that it wouldn’t be out of the question for the CEO to email me and I replied, sure. The next email was, fortunately, a clumsy attempt at fraud, asking me to buy some Xbox gift cards for a client, which made me look a little closer and notice that the email address hidden by the email client behind the CEO’s name was at a Russian ISP, so I dumped them into spam and posted a warning on Slack. Something less clumsily targeted might have caught someone (e.g., to do a test booking on our site, or open some tech window). That said, LinkedIn is useful enough to me that I’m willing to leave that window open, although it would be nice if company email addresses were less easily guessed.

Larrikin 3y ago
So the simplest most common email scam for anyone with a work email. It's not sophisticated or targeted, if anything you do matters to anyone you will get an email like that. It's really on you for not checking the email instead of replying to basically a horny single in your area that could maybe give you a promotion.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  Until recently, Microsoft Outlook idiotically hid the sender's email address when reading a message, showing only the display name. As it's the part that can be authenticated (DKIM etc) a stronger word than "idiotically" is also appropriate.
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    DKIM etc cannot authenticate the email address. It can authenticate the sender domain (which is the main win anyway). Only signed emails can be authenticated against the sender.
    - rcxdude 3y ago