Fun with Phishing!

Ok you could be forgiven for thinking that Phishing is never fun, the truth is of course it rarely is. However sometimes, just sometimes it can be fun to play email pranks and those pranks can prove entertaining and educational. You see sometimes phishing is done to raise awareness, make people think and to force change for the better.

In fact fake emails are a timeless prank, and while they are not exactly new, they still prove to be effective so much so that criminal enterprises and bad actors now leverage this for nefarious activity. One of the best ways to grab the publics attention is with humour and celebrity pranks will always draw attention. So these email pranks and pseudo-phishing attempts can provide very valuable lessons and highlight much needed attention on a subject that garners little main stream media attention until the very worst happens.

Far better to be targeted for lulz than malicious intent. One of the best ways to grab the publics attention is with humour and celebrity pranks will always draw attention. One of the grand masters of the form is the British prankster, social engineer, hacker and phishing expert James Linton, known by the Twitter alias @SINON_REBORN. Over a five-month period in 2016 through to 2017, Linton created over 150 look-alike email accounts and emailed high-profile individuals in the political, financial, and entertainment industries from his iPhone 7.

Using a combination of social engineering techniques James has made a number of powerful figures look a little foolish. He has phished The White House, The CEO of Barclays, CEO of Goldman Sachs, Kevin Spacey, Eric Trump and others have all been the target of his pranks.

James now runs his own business having worked with Agari and others in the industry, read about transition from prankster to professional here. Leaning on his unique skill set for engaging an audience, and his deep knowledge of social engineering, email and phishing he is coming up with innovative and value filled projects like “BattlePhish™” offering a gamification of employee phishing for the purpose of engaging a team in a fun and interactive way that provides an alternate way to encourage better email knowledge. He also provides The Email Threat Training System™ a video course companies can license for their internal use.

Hear some of his story and learn how to protect yourself and your employees at Festival of Email.