Chinese Hackers & SeriousSam: Cybersecurity News from the Week of 07/19/21

Published: July 28, 2021, 9:30am

Nation-state hacking continues to dominate the news, as fresh reports appeared last week related to Chinese state hackers involved in several significant breaches and hacks on U.S. critical infrastructure targets. We also discuss a new Microsoft bug dubbed SeriousSam. And the cybercriminal community is already hard at work leveraging the Tokyo Olympics to scam victims.

• Chinese hackers targeting critical US infrastructure and businesses
• Microsoft warning of SeriousSam severity
• Gold is flowing in Olympic cybercrime

Final Words

Major events, like the Olympics, holidays, or natural disasters are a special time for cybercrime. As noted in this week’s report on the uptick in Olympic-related scams, cybercriminals will exploit any opportunity to promote malware, phishing, or money-making schemes.

There is no better time than now to turn on and turn up your “scam meters.”  If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. There are no ‘official’ Olympic virtual tokens that fund athletes. And, yes, hackers will likely attempt denial of service attacks and other hacks.

As always, one of the best things you can do to protect yourself is to practice safe online computing habits, such as:

• Being cautious when clicking unfamiliar links to websites or opening attached files.
• Recognize and report phishing emails.
• Never hand out personal information—such as passwords—on an unfamiliar website.

Individuals and businesses can do a lot to stop cybercrime just by using common sense.

And if you want to earn your own gold medal, get it by refusing to become part of any Olympic cybercrime scam.