Sleight of Hand

Sammy Migues is principal scientist at Synopsys.

“Distractions — like holidays — are distracting to companies, people, and even bots (that might get overwhelmed with data while no one’s paying attention to care and feeding),” he said. “Magic works by sleight of hand. Attackers might spend months surveilling an organization, but holidays are a good time to do the noisy parts of attacks, such as credential stuffing on web servers, trying to spoof VPNs, pretexting to call centers, and so much more because the victim is less likely to notice the person behind the curtain.”