{"id":10332,"date":"2026-04-18T13:36:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T13:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/social-engineering-schemes-target-c-suite-executives-robinsoncole-data-privacy-security-insider\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T13:36:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T13:36:55","slug":"social-engineering-schemes-target-c-suite-executives-robinsoncole-data-privacy-security-insider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/social-engineering-schemes-target-c-suite-executives-robinsoncole-data-privacy-security-insider\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Engineering Schemes Target C-Suite Executives | Robinson+Cole Data Privacy + Security Insider"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div id=\"html-view-content\">\n<p>March was a busy month for former Black Basta affiliates who are using old social engineering techniques to target executives in the manufacturing, professional, scientific, and technical services industries. According to Reliaquest, the activity of the threat actors indicates that these sectors \u201cwere likely direct targets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to its <a href=\"https:\/\/reliaquest.com\/blog\/threat-spotlight-are-former-black-basta-affiliates-automating-executive-targeting\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a>, \u201cAttackers are using automation to compress a multi-step social engineering attack into minutes, reducing the time defenders have to intervene before a live remote management session is established on a senior leader\u2019s machine.\u201d This means that they target C-Suite executives to ratchet up the pressure. Initially, the threat actors send a high volume of emails, known as a \u201cbomb,\u201d which floods the user\u2019s email account within minutes. This technique is designed to overwhelm the user. While the victim struggles to manage a flood of incoming emails, the threat actor reaches out via a direct Microsoft Teams message or phone call (vishing), posing as technical support. Within minutes of the email flooding, the attacker initiates contact, gains the user\u2019s trust, and steals their credentials\u2014ultimately obtaining full access to the account.<\/p>\n<p>The rest is history. The takeaway? Educate your C-Suite executives on their an increased risk of being targeted by cyber threat actors and how to identify an email bomb, a vishing scheme, suspicious Teams chat from an external account, the launching of a remote session that is not one used by the organization, and to never give away their credentials. Any one of these clues could prevent an incident.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dataprivacyandsecurityinsider.com\/2026\/04\/social-engineering-schemes-target-c-suite-executives\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">View source<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>March was a busy month for former Black Basta affiliates who are using old social engineering techniques to target executives in the manufacturing, professional, scientific, and technical services [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4064,292,7757,4641,7760,1685,7759,7758,2494,571,3118],"class_list":["post-10332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-csuite","tag-data","tag-engineering","tag-executives","tag-insider","tag-privacy","tag-robinsoncole","tag-schemes","tag-security","tag-social","tag-target"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}