You know the practice. An email from a mysterious sender appears in your inbox, you delete it immediately. Whatever you do, you DO NOT open and you definitely do not click on any links in the message. You might think that this is common knowledge and that anyone with an Internet intelligence number will know this - especially anyone who might be dealing with highly confidential information, say scientists and military engineers. Ouch, you're wrong
An Associated Press report, published on Wednesday, revealed that Russian hackers have targeted major contract workers involved in unmanned military drones, missiles, cloud computing platforms and other sensitive defense technologies. This in itself is not too surprising, but surprisingly, 40 percent of 87 targets continue to click on the ingenious phishing links contained within the body of the email. Clicking on the link leaves a worker's personal email account and computer files that are vulnerable to data theft.
To date, the amount of information they can get is unclear but it certainly raises many questions about the security of US cybersecurity.
"The program they are targeting and the people working on the program are some of the most advanced advanced technologies," Charles Sowell, a senior advisor to the US National Intelligence Director, told AP.
"[I] f those programs are compromised in any way, then our competitive advantage and defense are compromised."
The hackers involved in this attack are a group called Fancy Bear. This is the same person who intervened in the US presidential election, working for the Kremlin to direct Trump to victory. This time their goal is to steal US defense secrets, especially those related to drone technology.
"This will allow them to leap years of hard experience," explains Keven Gambold, a drone consultant and hacking target.
Even those with a strong understanding of email 101, could fall prey to these phishing attempts when tired or distracted. That's what happened to James Poss, who was involved in drone research for the Federal Aviation Administration. He will take a taxi to the Paris Air Show 2015 when, interrupted, he clicks on an incoming email link created to look like a Google security warning.
"I clicked on it and immediately knew I had it," he said.
Even stranger is the fact that the FBI seems to have known hacking campaigns for over a year. The problem is they find it difficult to follow a large number of cyber attacks.