Safety & Security

• What is a social engineering attack?
• What is a phishing attack? 
• How do you avoid being a victim of an engineering or phishing attack? 
• What do you do if you think you are a victim?
• Tips to Help You Protect Your Personal Identity
• Important Notice to GECU Members
• IRS Phishing Scam and Identity Theft
• Forget Phish, Beware of RATs
• LimeWire - Downloaders Beware! 
• ATM Safety and You

What is a social engineering attack?

To launch a social engineering attack, an attacker uses human interaction (social skills) to obtain or compromise information about an organization or its computer systems. An attacker may seem unassuming and respectable, possibly claiming to be a new employee, repair person, or researcher and even offering credentials to support that identity. However, by asking questions, he or she may be able to piece together enough information to infiltrate an organization's network. If an attacker is not able to gather enough information from one source, he or she may contact another source within the same organization and rely on the information from the first source to add to his or her credibility.

What is a phishing attack?

Phishing is a form of social engineering. Phishing attacks use email or malicious web sites to solicit personal, often financial, information. Attackers may send email seemingly from a reputable credit card company or financial institution that requests account information, often suggesting that there is a problem. When users respond with the requested information, attackers can use it to gain access to the accounts.

        How do you avoid being a victim?

• Be suspicious of unsolicited phone calls, visits, or email messages from individuals asking about employees or other internal information. If an unknown individual claims to be from a legitimate organization, try to verify his or her identity directly with the company.

   

• Do not provide personal information or information about your organization, including its structure or networks, unless you are certain of a person's authority to have the information.

   

• Do not reveal personal or financial information in email, and do not respond to email solicitations for this information. This includes following links sent in email.

   

• Don't send sensitive information over the Internet before checking a web site's security (see Protecting Your Privacy for more information).

   

• Pay attention to the URL of a web site. Malicious web sites may look identical to a legitimate site, but the URL may use a variation in spelling or a different domain (e.g., .com vs. .net).

   

• If you are unsure whether an email request is legitimate, try to verify it by contacting the company directly. Do not use contact information provided on a web site connected to the request; instead, check previous statements for contact information. Information about known phishing attacks is also available online from groups such as the Anti-Phishing Working Group (http://www.antiphishing.org/phishing_archive.html).

   

• Install and maintain anti-virus software, firewalls, and email filters to reduce some of this traffic (see Understanding Firewalls, Understanding Anti-Virus Software, and Reducing Spam for more information).

        What do you do if you think you are a victim?

• If you believe you might have revealed sensitive information about your organization, report it to the appropriate people within the organization, including network administrators. They can be alert for any suspicious or unusual activity.

   

• If you believe your financial accounts may be compromised, contact your financial institution immediately and close any accounts that may have been compromised. Watch for any unexplainable charges to your account.

   

• Consider reporting the attack to the police, and file a report with the Federal Trade Commission (http://www.ftc.gov/).
  
  

  

   

   

Tips to Help You Protect Your Personal Identity

1. Keep personal financial information, like account numbers, in a safe place.
2. Don't keep PINs, passwords or your social security number in your purse or wallet.
3. Monitor your billing statements for suspicios activity.
4. Shred sensitive documents.
5. Request a free credit report at least once a year from annualcreditreport.com. Report any errors you find immediately.
6. Portect your computer by keeping your anti-viral, firewall and other software up-to-date.
7. Delete e-mail or text messages if you don't know who the sender is or if the offer sounds too good to be true. 

Important Notice to GECU Members

GECU has been alerted to a fraudulent e-mail being sent to our members about their GECU MasterCard credit card, MasterMoney debit card or ATM card. This e-mail instructs members to click on a link to reactivate a card that was compromised and closed. If you should receive an e-mail of this type, do not respond and delete it immediately. GECU will never request personal account information from you by phone or e-mail. If you have responded to this e-mail and provided your personal account information, please call SmartCall immediately at 915.778.9221 (toll-free, 1.800.772.GECU).

IRS Phishing Scam and Identity Theft

US-CERT continues to receive reports of phishing scams that target online users. Most recently, users have reported receiving emails that appear to be from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The phishing email claims to offer a tax refund and requests users to click on a link to provide personal and possibly sensitive information. Identity thieves could use this information to further compromise unsuspecting victims.
A spokesperson for the IRS has confirmed that they do not solicit anything by email.

Forget Phish, Beware of RATS

Phishing, Skimming and now RATS? That's right! RATs or Remote Access Trojans are the latest wave in Internet identity theft. The worst part, RATS are silent and you won't know they're on your computer.

If you believe you have been a victim of a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) after logging into your GECU account, contact SmartCall at 915.778.9221 (Toll free 1.800.772.GECU).

Information for this article used with the permission of NewsChannel 9.

LimeWire - Downloaders Beware!