MailGuard Blog

The fake Origin Energy bill notice in the screenshot above is an example of a new email scam that is targeting inboxes today.

The scam email message invites recipients to view their bill online, but the .doc file the link points to is infected with hidden malware.

Last December, cybercriminals stole millions of dollars from several law firms with a simple email scam.

The scammers phoned the lawyers and asked them for legal advice. After a conversation over the phone they promised to email the lawyers some ‘important documents’ related to their cases. When the lawyers opened the emails they found links that pointed to documents stored on an online file sharing site that required them to enter their email account passwords to gain access.

Friday afternoon at a typical office in Sydney, Australia. Most of the staff have left to start their weekends when a junior accountant sees an email appear in her inbox. She hesitates for a moment but then she notices that it’s from the company’s CEO.

‘Are you still in the office?’ the message reads. ‘Sorry to keep you back on a Friday night, but this is urgent: I need you to make a wire transfer for me immediately in the amount of $45,000 to my broker in London.

In this age of internet-based commerce, all cybercriminals need to do to take control of our company’s finances or steal our data is get us to click on a link. Scammers have come up with some devious tactics to induce their victims into falling for their tricks, and one of the most successful is brandjacking.

MailGuard has detected a new zero-day phishing scam using fake Netflix branding.

Netflix has become a favourite vehicle for email fraudsters. Their large customer base makes them a valuable target for brandjacking; cybercrime that exploits the trademarks of well-known companies to deceive victims.

There’s a striking cybercrime case in the headlines this week involving email fraud.

John Kahlbetzer - one of the richest people in Australia according to Forbes - lost AU$1 million in a scam that was as simple as it was effective.

This morning MailGuard has intercepted a large volume email scam. The messages are fake invoice reminders, using the brand ‘Xero’ to try and inspire trust. The email contains a link which pretends to point at an invoice but actually goes to a zipped JavaScript file containing trojan malware

The most profitable time of year for retailers is right now - between the North American ‘Thanksgiving’ and new-year. When business is booming, cybercriminals are busy too. The holiday season creates a perfect storm for criminals. Retail companies are doing billions in transactions and during the silly season there’s more work to do during the same hours. Everyone is overworked and under pressure, which is the perfect environment for scams to be executed.

 Only one percent of Australia’s top 100 companies feel “very confident” about being safe from cyber attacks, a new survey has found.

 Email has quickly become an integral part of people’s lives. But it's fast becoming expensive (and no, I don’t mean the daily flood of offers from your favourite shops).

 A new version of a phishing email impersonating energy giant AGL, and containing dangerous ransomware, is again hitting Australian inboxes.

 Spear-phishing and ransomware are the most common cyber techniques used to exploit Australians, a new cybercrime threat report has revealed.

 Some of the world’s top cybersecurity experts gathered in Melbourne this week for the Australian Internet Governance Forum.

 A new email phishing scam impersonating Apple is hitting inboxes. At the time of detection early Friday morning (AEST) by MailGuard, 68 other antivirus vendors were not marking the scam as malicious.

The mammoth risks posed by a cybersecurity breach means leaders need to tackle the growing threat at board level, according to Australia’s Prime Minister.