Scams, Smishing, and Safety Nets: How Emerging Threats Catches Phish

DISCARDED: Tales From the Threat Research Trenches

Hello to all our Cyber Pals! Join host Selena Larson and guest, Genina Po, Threat Researcher at Emerging Threats at Proofpoint. She shares how she tackles emerging cyber threats, breaking down the process of turning data into detection signatures. Using tools like Suricata to create detections for malicious activity, she maps out her approach to writing rules that identify and block these threats.
The goal? Equip companies to stay secure, and encourage listeners with the skills to spot and prevent scams on their own. Genina shares her journey tracking pig butchering scams through thousands of domains and URLs. She reveals patterns—certain headers and markers—that help identify these sites amid a flood of data, and she describes the challenges in detection, as scammers increasingly vary their setups to evade filters.
Also discussed:

• proactive measures against phishing and fraud sites, with Proofpoint using "takedown" services to remove malicious domains, disrupting scams before they impact users
• the importance of questioning biases, particularly in cyber threat intelligence where assumptions can shape classifications and responses
• collaboration with Chainalysis to connect various scams through cryptocurrency wallets, showing cross-over between different fraud types

Resources mentioned:
Book: Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
For more information about Proofpoint, check out our website.

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