Last updated on November 18, 2022

Hithawathi

Monthly Bulletin

Volume 01 Issue 05 – 20th September 2020

Vishing attacks

“Vishing attacks have increased significantly with more employees working from home”
-News alert-

Vishing derives from ‘voice’ plus ‘phishing’.
Phishing is a notorious way of cheating people with the use of emails, regular phone calls or fake websites to steal their confidential personal information.
Vishers who engage in the act of vishing deceive people by using an internet telephone service (VoIP) to call the targeted. Simply, vishing can be introduced as the phone version of email phishing.
Both Phishing and Vishing are types of social engineering.

Overall in 2019, nearly $667 million was lost to all impostor scams in USA. That’s up for a 34 percent increase than the previous year.

Ref. https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2020/ftc-fraud-complaints-rise.html

Spam and scam – two words that look and sound very similar. They consist of differences, yet interconnected to a point.

  • Spammers do not want to steal your information or con you.
  • But Scammers do! They trick to deceive people out of their information and/or money

A team of academic researchers have discovered a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) vulnerability that allows spoofing attacks that could affect the way humans and machines carry out tasks. It potentially impacts billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and remains unpatched in Android devices.
https://threatpost.com/

Vulnerabilities in a legacy protocol and Identity Provider Solutions can be exploited by attackers to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) for Microsoft 365
https://www.itnews.com.au/

Selling phones without factory resetting – chance given to recover the content and blackmail

(Some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.)

Misha was experiencing a financially hard time by the end of last year and as a result she decided to sell her phone to small phone shop on the street for a better deal. After about a month’s time, she got a phone call from a telephone booth and the conversation was,

Caller: Hello my dear, hope you’re doing well!
Misha: Who’s this please?
Caller: Well…you don’t really know me and do not try to find who I am..
Just listen carefully to what I am saying okayy?
You sold your phone last month right?
Misha: Yeah..(surprisingly) how do you know that?
Caller: I bought it darling. Plus managed to recover some of your nude and romantic pictures.
Misha: What??…………………………..

Read more stories

Hithawathi was invited for the Yeheli Networking event with the experts who are working with them. The event held on the 9th of November 2019 at Kingsbury from 6.30 p.m onwards.

Comment the correct answer and win a data card from Hithawathi by visiting our Facebook page every Friday, Saturday & Sunday.

Awareness Programmes

Hithawathi awareness programm held on 6th March 2020 at Lyceum international School Nuwara Eliya.
Participants : Grade 8 to A/L students, teachers and parents.