Short URL services such as bit.ly are consistently used by criminals to get phishing links past email security solutions and onto their victims’ computers. In this article, we show you how short URLs are used as part of spam campaigns and why Heimdall and its dedicated web crawler offer ideal protection against attacks.
In a joint operation, law enforcement agencies from Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Lithuania, France, as well as England, Canada and the United States have smashed the infrastructure of the Emotet malware. Emotet was previously considered the most dangerous malware in the world and in the vast majority of cases was used to extort ransom from victims.
In his analyses, Heimdall has repeatedly noticed short URL services in a particularly negative light in recent months. These URL shorteners generate an alternative, short URL that can be used on Twitter, for example. In this way, the number of characters used in a post can be reduced. The fact that the use of these services can cause problems is, of course, already due to the fact that the actual target of the URL is not recognizable – virtually an invitation to phishers and other cybercriminals.
At the turn of the year 2019/2020, the time had come: Heimdall began to send assessments of emails to the participants of the Heimdall beta. Over the course of 2020, the repertoire of detections grew significantly. In this article, we will look back at a number of developments and show how Heimdall became increasingly active, especially in the second half of 2020.
Certain software versions will no longer be supported in the future version 14 of the NoSpamProxy. To avoid problems when updating from version 13.2 to version 14, you should check your infrastructure early and update software that is no longer supported. The following discontinuations do not affect version 13.2 but only version 14.
The current threat situation is shaped by the trojan Emotet. A striking feature of cyber attacks is that the attack patterns vary rapidly. This makes it difficult to specifically detect Emotet threats at all levels.
Stefan Cink, Product Manager of NoSpamProxy and email security expert at Net at Work, is the new Business Unit Manager for NoSpamProxy as of January 1, 2020. As Business Unit Manager, he reports directly to the management and is responsible for the business objectives regarding profitability, growth and sustainability. He takes over this task from […]
