Malicious DHL shipment email — Logical Cybersecurity

Real World Examples of Social Engineering Attacks

Social engineering is basically defined as manipulating people into giving up confidential information. Social engineering can occur in person, by phone, or electronically (phishing email, fake website, etc.) and is the easiest way to breach a company, network, computer, etc. Your network and/or devices can be extremely secure, but clicking on one malicious link or attachment within a phishing email, visiting a malicious website, downloading a malicious app/program/file, or allowing a malicious person physical or virtual access to your device and/or office can slice right through your security. Attackers have found clever ways to use human nature against us to trick us into clicking something, revealing private information or allowing physical or virtual access to things we wouldn't normally do. We will go over some common warning signs to look for, provide ways to prove the legitimacy of an email, verify someone's identity, as well as provide examples of actual, real world social engineering attacks to help you better protect yourself, your family, friends, and clients/customers.

Malicious phishing emails referencing lost or missed shipments happen often. In this example, the phishing email is referencing an anticipated delivery. The attacker takes a chance/makes a guess that the email recipient has placed orders with Apple in the past or has made one recently.

Let's walk through the email and see what type of warning flags could have alerted the recipient to its malicious intentions.

Here is the email the recipient was sent:

If the recipient hasn't ordered anything from Apple or any company/website that sells Apple products recently, they should just delete the email.

If the recipient has ordered something from Apple or another company/website that sells Apple products, they should log in to the website they ordered the Apple product from and check the shipping details there. The recipient may also remember when they ordered the Apple product who the shipping company was. If nothing points to DHL, that would be the perfect warning sign. If it is being shipped via DHL, the tracking number should be listed on the website where the product was ordered from or some other type of order details such as shipment estimated arrival time. If anything doesn't match, that would be a clear indicator something isn't right.

The most obvious indicator is when hovering over the website link where it says "click here", without clicking the link, the recipient would see it is a random website with DHL-Express/US thrown on at the end to make it seem legitimate. Anything listed after .com, .net, .ca, .fr, etc. is irrelevant. the words listed just before .com, .net, etc. is what matters most. In this case, the words were totally unrelated to DHL.

One other warning sign is the unprofessional look to the email in general. With that aside, there are plenty of other warning signs to indicate this email is very suspicious and should probably be deleted.

Logical Cybersecurity

Logical Cybersecurity

Real World Examples of Scams and Phishing Emails

Logical Cybersecurity

Real World Examples of Social Engineering Attacks