Phishing: Unlikely Victims Took the Bait

Prosecution: 

While phishing attacks are not new, they are on the rise with the increase in remote jobs coupled with the fear and uncertainty of the global pandemic. Today, people must be more vigilant than ever against phishing attacks as the attackers have become a lot more cunning and sophisticated in their tactics. Let us look at a federal case that involved phishing and see how digital forensics allowed the prosecution to find the responsible party and press charges. 

In July, a large court system was targeted by John Doe and his co-conspirators with a malicious phishing email disguised to the court workers as a Dropbox email. Thousands of the court employees who received the email were compromised when they unknowingly clicked on a fraudulent link and entered their usernames and passwords. From there, the attackers were able to access sensitive information and send out around two million additional phishing emails, seemingly from other large, reputable companies. 

The court was made aware of this when their systems went down as a result of the attack, hindering the employees from performing their duties for hours and sometimes even days, and costing the courts almost $50k in losses. After contacting a digital forensics agency to investigate this breach, they were able to connect John Doe and his affiliates. With additional warrants, they were able to find more devices that provided concrete evidence of the crimes committed despite the defendant's attempts to destroy the devices prior to authorities arriving. 

The attack was used to obtain and steal the credit card information of hundreds of victims. John Doe’s affiliate was caught using some of the stolen credit card information to make purchases online under an alias and was later arrested with John Doe. John Doe was convicted to 12 years in federal prison for various cybercrimes.  The other partners were charged with a lesser offense due to the fact that they hired John Doe to execute the breach and they themselves just reaped the benefits. 

Thanks to digital forensics, the court system was able to identify the responsible parties and pursue justice. This attack opened the eyes of the court system to the fact that anyone can be the victim of a skilled phishing attack. Now, they have a new cyber security protocol to prevent future attacks and mitigate any damages from those attacks.  
 
 

Defense: 

With every day that passes, cybercriminals are getting more and more clever with their attacks making it even more difficult for consumers to keep themselves and their data protected. Unfortunately, there are many consumers who think that because it has not happened to them yet they are fine, but there were almost 700 phishing attacks a day in 2020, just over double the number of attacks from 2019. Let's look at a case involving a phishing attack. 

Jane Doe was working for a big financial firm that handled millions of accounts for the area they serviced. In her job, she receives many emails and sends even more emails out to clients and potential clients that she has set in her email automation. One day an investigator had come in to question her and her boss about fraud allegations; fraud allegations happen often in the industry, so it did not particularly phase her, and she cooperated with the investigation. 

Later, the police came back to arrest Jane Doe with the suspicion of her involvement in phishing attacks and fraudulent activity. Certain of her innocence related to the charges, she decided to contact her attorney. Her attorney decided to have her devices at work forensically analyzed as well as her personal phone since it had access to her work email. 

The digital forensic company received the devices and started analyzing the available data. After they finished their extraction and analysis, they were able to provide admissible evidence to Jane Doe’s attorney. The analysis concluded that Jane Doe did not send phishing emails but was hacked by a third party. Jane Doe did not realize that she had been hacked because they had created a phishing email in email automation that she did not check regularly. 

Without the help of the forensics team, Jane could have taken the fall for financial fraud, phishing attacks, and lost her job. Now, Jane can continue working in the financial industry and help members of her community with their financial needs. After this mishap, Jane Doe takes extra precautions with her digital devices and is more diligent about cyber education.