The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) receives over a quarter of a million malicious daily email attacks, according to official figures.
This data revealed under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act by the Parliament Street think tank’s cyber security team. It showed 283,597 malicious emails were blocked by the organization every day over the first eight months of 2020.
The scale of daily email attacks
The data shows that the BBC receives an average of 6,704,188 monthly hostile emails classed as scam or spam. Additionally, an average of 18,662 malware attacks such as viruses, ransomware and spyware are blocked. From January to August 2020, a total of 51,898,393 infected emails were blocked by the BBCs systems.
The highest month of daily email attacks was July with a huge total of 6,801,227 incidents recorded. Of these 6,787,635 were spam and 13,592 were malware. The second highest month was March, when the COVID-19 outbreak was at its worst in the UK. The BBC received 6,768,632 spam attempts and 14,089 malware attempts, totalling 6,782,721.
The vast majority of email sent every day is unsolicited junk mail. Examples include:
Advertising, for example online pharmacies, pornography, dating, gambling.
Multiple cyber-attack incidents
In the past the BBC has experienced multiple incidents when it comes to cyber attempts and potential breaches. In 2013 the BBC twitter feed was subject to a phishing hack. It appeared to be sympathizers of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The BBC said the “phishing” emails contained what appeared to be links to The Guardian newspaper or Human Rights Watch online and brought users to a fake web mail portal.
In 2016 there was another hack. An anti-Isis hacking group claimed responsibility for downing BBC websites and services on New Year’s Eve.
Additionally, there were daily email attacks in December 2015, when the BBC’s websites were unavailable because of a large web attack. However, it is believed that a web attack technique known as a “distributed denial of service” was causing the patchy response. This aims to knock a site offline by swamping it with more traffic than it can handle.
A ripe opportunity for hackers
The data suggests that it is an ongoing struggle for the BBC to obstruct these malware, phishing and spam attempts.
Tim Sadler,
CEO at Tessian
According to Tim Sadler, CEO at Tessian, “The global pandemic has become a ripe opportunity for hackers’ phishing scams. We can clearly see that in reflected in the spike of malicious attacks on the BBC. In the wake of the outbreak, journalists and employees would have been busier and more distracted than usual.
“Using clever social engineering techniques, cyber-criminals’ prey on people’s desire for information during uncertain times. They bank on the fact that busy, distracted and stressed employees may miss the signs of a phishing email. As a result, they fall for their scams. Organizations, therefore, must have security measures in place to automatically predict such email threats and warn people before they click or download an attachment.”
What do these daily email attacks means for business?
The various malware, phishing and cyber-attacks on the BBC acts as a warning for all businesses. Criminals will never let a good crisis go to waste. Employees are now connecting to their organizations from home in large numbers. This allows cyber criminals to target businesses in many more ways. These tactics have always existed. Therefore, as Tim Sadler advises, organizations must have the security measures to detect such email threats.
At LIS our clients benefit from the latest anti-spam and anti-virus solutions. They also take advantage of our Office 365 Security Package. This allows them to stop advanced threats and stay compliant. As well as being productive and keeping their data safe. Contact the LIS Help Desk to make sure your business is safe and secure.
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