A New Type of Attack - "OAuth" Attacks
The landscape of cyber security is constantly changing. Changing along with the landscape are the ways that bad actors attempt to use the landscape to garner user information in an attempt to profit and create chaos. The latest trend on that front are being called OAuth attacks. While they are similar to a phishing email, they are harder to spot and can be more detrimental.
How Does It Work?
For the most part, these attacks can be classified as a phishing email - an email that appears to be from a reputable source at first sight, but is actually a trick. You can read more about phishing threats in previous issues of Tech Talk News on our website.
What makes these OAuth threats different from other attempts is that they are not looking to grab your account information. Instead of sending a fake link that they hope you will click on, they send a real link. The link in the email will be a link that actually leads to your Microsoft account and to a real login page.
The page does not give the bad actors your credentials, but it instead brings up a request for access to your account. Similar to a standard phishing threat, the key is that users believe they are giving access to a company like LinkedIn or Netflix, but in reality it is a hacker.
These permissions give the hacker access to all user data in email, calendars, cloud storage, etc. and, because they don't login to your account directly, it becomes more difficult to remediate as things like changing your password will not revoke the access that they've been granted.
The two major points to prevent such an issue are a Unified Threat Management (UTM) platform and training. UTMs can help to filter those emails out before they get to users, but some will always get through, so keeping all users up to date and aware of the threats is also key.
If you are interested in discussing a UTM or user training/presentations, please feel free to call into our office or send us and email to request just that.
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