As part of the Human Firewall Strength Procedure, to help increase and improve the online security and safety of KAUST personnel, we routinely carry out Information Security Awareness campaigns as an ongoing effort to strengthen the KAUST Human Firewall.
In our latest campaign, the following information might have alerted you that it was a phishing attempt: the email was sent from outside KAUST; ‘scanner@webshar.es’, not a KAUST-owned email/website.
If a hacker has knowledge that KAUST or most organizations use HP multi-function printers and attempts to send an email designed to mimic what the printer sends by default (an attachment with an empty body), the aim is to trick users to be curious to open the email. So remember, even if you have actually just scanned a document; be sure to view the sender details.
Emails were sent out to 3,804 community members, and almost 20.5% opened the attachment! If this was a real phish, all the machines used to open the attachment are potentially compromised. However, since we have anti-virus software installed on KAUST machines, we are still protected to an acceptable degree.
Phishing is defined as the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
This campaign is a good reminder for us all in the KAUST community to refrain from clicking links that come from external email addresses before verifying their authenticity and to have up to date anti virus software.
We congratulate the following individuals, who were the fastest reporters for this phishing campaign:
| May-18 | |
| Winners | Reported within |
| Maya A Fritz | 21 seconds |
| Faisal I. Alofesan | 27 seconds |
| Imtiyaz Pasha | 31 seconds |
| Jul-18 | |
| Winners | Reported within |
| Karthikeyan Murugan | 13 seconds |
| Paulo Prioste | 17 seconds |
| Abdullah K. Wasfi | 19 seconds |
For any queries, feel free to reach out to us at: askinfosec@kaust.edu.sa
Good luck!