United States Reported Less Data Breaches in 2020 but with much more Expensive Successful Hacker Attacks
According to the annual report of the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), 1,108 cyber incidents were reported in 2020 and the number casualties from these incidents was close to 301 million people, a drop of 66% over the previous year.
The social engineering technique of impersonation also helped attackers reap massive profits:
The volume of business fraud and hacking by corporate e-mail systems (BECs) reported to the FBI in 2020 was US$ 1.8 Billion – a figure that reflects half of all cyber damage in monetary terms.
“The trend away from mass data breaches and toward more precise and sophisticated cyberattacks doesn’t mean businesses can relax. Just the opposite. They need to learn whole new ways of protecting their data.”
– James E. Lee, ITRC COO
Read more about Examples and Numbers of Social Engineering Hacker Attacks ›
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📊 5 Mistakes Executives Make During Cyber Incidents
🚨 Many leaders act on partial or outdated data, making critical decisions blind.
⚙️ Focusing purely on technical fixes without business, legal, or reputational context limits effectiveness.
🗣️ Silent communication – internal or external – causes loss of trust and growing uncertainty.
📄 Policy documents that don’t reflect reality get ignored when crisis hits.
💡 Creative ideas are good, but untested ones fail when infrastructure doesn’t support them.
📈 Leadership needs scenario drills, communication rehearsals, and documented continuity plans.
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Hackers Target Universities – Not Just For Money
🎓 Universities Are High-Impact Targets – Not Just For Money
🚨 Attackers deface pages and leak records to expose perceived policy violations or to protest actions.
🔍 Academic networks hold sensitive research, personal data, and fragmented systems that invite exploitation by attackers.
⚠️ Ideological groups sometimes use breaches to make public statements and pressure institutional leaders.
💥 Some attacks include multi-year data dumps, causing reputational damage and regulatory exposure for schools.
📈 Attempts against higher education infrastructure have risen sharply, showing a global and persistent trend.
🛡️ Defenders must prioritize unified governance, visibility, and rapid incident response across all departments.
🔐 Implement identity hygiene, segmentation, and rapid patching to reduce attack surface and lateral movement risk.
🧪 Run red team simulations and tabletop exercises to test readiness and public communication plans effectively.
🔎 Monitor for spikes in submissions, unusual access patterns, and cross-departmental anomalies in logs to detect intrusions early.
🤝 Coordinate with legal, PR, and academic leadership to prepare rapid, transparent responses that limit fallout.
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AkiraBot Spam Campaign – How AI-Powered Bots Outsmart Contact Forms and CAPTCHAs
🤖 AkiraBot Spam Campaign Exposes Weak Contact Forms
🚨 AkiraBot used GPT-based content and browser automation to send personalized messages to over 80,000 websites.
🧩 The messages embedded site names and service descriptions to bypass duplicate-content spam heuristics used by filters.
🔐 The bot simulated human browsing with Selenium, injected page scripts, and used CAPTCHA solving services when needed.
🕵️ Detection failed due to reliance on content similarity rather than behavioral analysis of submissions.
🛡️ Defenders must adopt layered controls including behavior analytics, strict validation, rate limits, and provenance checks.
💥 The campaign caused wasted marketing spend, potential brand damage, and increased remediation costs for victims.
🔎 Look for signals like spikes in form submissions, anomalous interaction timings, and diverse proxy networks in logs.
⚙️ Immediate steps include temporary form lockdowns, forensic captures, and coordinated takedowns with providers.
📈 Regular tabletop exercises and simulations improve readiness and reduce the risk of large-scale automated abuse.
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