One sure fire way to avoid becoming a victim of a cyberattack is to call the email sender to verify that they in fact sent the email.  That is a message that I preach over and over again all over campus. I am happy to report that my message is being heard and acted upon…sort of.

Here is the email that one of our staff received in their inbox.

 

 

The staff member knows the sender and aside from the poor grammar, the email is spot on. The  attachment was indeed a Sharepoint document, so she opened it. However when she found nothing but a greeting link to another document she paused.  She knew that email addresses could be spoofed and realized she should confirm the legitimacy of the email. So she sent this email.

 

 

She correctly did not reply to the original email.  But created a new one and sent it using an email address in her contact list. This is the reply that she received.

 

 

 

Before she could check the invoice, she received this email.

 

 

The sender’s email account had been hacked!  It didn’t occur to our staff member that if someone else was using her colleague’s email address, it wouldn’t be her colleague who responded .  She gets an A for verifying the legitimacy of the email.  But she gets a F for talking to the hacker.

The lesson has been learned. When confirming email legitimacy, use the darn phone.  A 30 second phone call can save you from a world of hurt.