Following the news that the Russian hacking group known as Fancy Bear, which breached the Clinton campaign last year, has targeted the campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron with advanced email attacks. Ravi Khatod, CEO at Email Security Specialist Agar commented below.
Ravi Khatod, CEO at Agari:
“With the volume and sophistication of social engineering attacks now taking place, it will not be a surprise if we see another major breach to rival that of last year’s attack on Clinton campaign aide John Podesta within the year. If the same group is indeed responsible, they have a proven track record of successfully infiltrating email accounts and causing severe damage.
The fact that Macron’s campaign team has said it has put measures in place to block emails from the malicious domains is encouraging. We implore all political parties to ensure they likewise make email security a priority, particularly those with high stakes elections coming up such as Germany and now the UK.
At a minimum, there is no excuse not to implement the DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) email authentication policy to help identify and block malicious emails impersonating trusted domains. However, other advanced precautions also need to be taken, with an emphasis on verifying the identity of the sender. Traditional email security filters can no longer be relied on as they have no ability to prevent targeted attacks.
Unless the threat of social engineering email attacks is taken seriously by all political parties and individuals, it is simply a matter of time before another high-profile breach takes place.”
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