Preterion's Content Management

Author: Team Preterion

  • Scam Alert: Fake Trademark Emails Targeting Australian Businesses

    Scam Alert: Fake Trademark Emails Targeting Australian Businesses

    At Preterion, part of our job is to protect your business—not just your infrastructure, but your peace of mind. Recently, we’ve seen a rise in a specific type of scam that’s targeting Australian companies, and we want to make sure you’re aware of it.

    What’s Happening?

    Scammers are sending out emails claiming that someone is attempting to register your business name as a trademark. These emails are designed to cause panic and urgency, pushing you to pay for unnecessary trademark services or legal action.

    Here’s how the scam usually works:

    • You receive an email claiming that a third party is trying to register your business name as their trademark.
    • The message urges you to act fast to “protect your rights.”
    • It may include references to Australian laws or government agencies to sound official.
    • You might see a professional-looking email signature, branding, or even a fake business card.
    • The sender might use a domain like markfilersau.com or similar to seem legitimate.

    These emails are fraudulent. They are not connected to IP Australia or any legitimate trademark or legal organisation.

    What Should You Do?

    If you receive a suspicious email like this:

    • Do not reply, click on any links, or provide any personal or business information.
    • Do not make any payments or share banking details.
    • Delete the message immediately.
    • Verify any legitimate trademark communication by contacting IP Australia or your legal advisor directly.

    Mirai Legal has published a detailed article with more examples and known scam domains. We recommend reviewing their post to familiarise yourself with the warning signs:
    CLICK HERE to visit or do a Google search: “Mirai Legal Trade Mark Scam Warning” to find the latest update.

    Need Help?

    If you’re ever unsure about a suspicious message, contact us first. The Preterion team is here to act as your internal IT department—we’ll help you verify, block, or report the issue quickly and safely.

  • Not Using 2FA? Malvertisers Can Trick Even IT Pros into Giving Up Passwords!

    Not Using 2FA? Malvertisers Can Trick Even IT Pros into Giving Up Passwords!

    Attacks on our private information seem to come from everywhere. The worst thing is that perpetrators have thought of a new way to access your data by the time you feel you are on top of the security your devices need.

    Where does it stop?

    Awareness helps. The type of attack we talk about in this blog is particularly insidious because it can even trick seasoned IT professionals who actively look for malware. If they can be fooled, what hope do the rest of us have?

    Malvertisers are particularly crafty with their attacks. Let’s look at their latest strategy to take over your devices.

    What is a Malvertiser?

    Distributing malware via online advertisements is the purpose of malvertisers. With advertising being a critical source of income for websites, malvertising takes advantage of these growing pathways to reach large online audiences.

    Malvertisers use a range of strategies, with the result always being to either direct a user to a malicious server or to get them to download malware onto their device. Online vendors are aware of malvertising strategies and work to prevent their attacks however this is not easy to accomplish.

    Let’s go Phishing

    Malvertisers use Phishing Kits to lure you in. They are an open-source tool that enables them to create websites specifically for phishing, demonstrating the lengths attackers will go to access your devices and information.

    You have seen the types of websites they create, straightforward websites with funny cat pics, trashy stories about celebrities, or blog posts with sensational headlines. These sites are all designed to get you to click on fake adverts that will take you to phishing websites where the aim is to get you to give them your password.

    Simulated Login Websites

    A new practice, the Browser In The Browser (BITB) Attack, has been uncovered and documented by mr.d0x. See his in-depth explanation about BITB attacks here.

    Essentially, the BITB attack involves the malicious player building a website that has a registration and login pop-up that mimics those used for a cloud service like Office365, Facebook, and Google, to name a few. They do this so well that it is likely to fool an IT professional.

    It looks so realistic because the pop-up they create has the correct URL, and it looks exactly like the actual window you would use to log in with Facebook and Google. This enables the attacker to collect usernames and passwords to hack accounts.

    If you are suspicious about a window you plan to use to log in, try dragging the window. If you can move it to the edge of the browser, it’s real. If not, then you know it is fake.

    How to Safeguard Against a BITB Attack

    The ONLY way to ensure you are safe against this type of attack is to always use two-factor authentication for all of your online platforms. The reason why 2FA is successful is that if you are a victim of such an attack, the attacker will need the code to access your account, which of course, goes to you and ensures they are locked out.

    A Few Last Words

    Always think about security with your online presence. The little extra time it takes to implement and use security measures like two-factor authentication is worth spending. Imagine the time, inconvenience, and cost of being successfully hacked. Prevention is undoubtedly worth the effort.

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  • Is Microsoft Sending Hackers To The Dark Side?

    Is Microsoft Sending Hackers To The Dark Side?

    In a recent article on bleepingcomputer.com, the news of a new zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft’s Windows operating system took an interesting twist I was not aware of.

    Some context on zero-day vulnerabilities

    A zero-day vulnerability has only been made known to the vendor (in our case Microsoft), meaning they have “zero-days” to fix it. This kind of exploit is considered dangerous as it allows hackers to exploit the flaw in real-life attacks, sometimes for years before both the vendor and the public are aware and can take counter-measures.

    When security researchers (basically, white-hat hackers) find such vulnerabilities, they have avenues to report them to the vendors. In most cases, big names like Microsoft, Apple or Google will offer a monetary reward. In recent years, big software companies have established bounty programs sometimes offering quite large amounts of money.

    Here comes the bad news

    What is surprising and unexpected about this recently discovered vulnerability is accompanying comments about why the researcher has decided to make the zero-day exploit public, together with proof of concept.

    Microsoft has dropped their bounty program rewards – in some cases reducing them ten times or more. Looking further at the article, it seems like this is just the tip of the iceberg, with many researchers complaining (with examples).

    Are we going to see more attacks because of it?

    Here’s why this is important and should be a concern for any business using the Microsoft platform and systems:

    We all know software is not perfect. Researchers and hackers constantly find new bugs and vulnerabilities. The bounty programs are an ideal way to incentivise experts to find proactively issues that need fixing. It is a continuous race between the good guys and the bad guys to be the first to discover exploits and either report or exploit them in malicious players’ cases.

    In both cases, it’s all about the money, and whilst bad actors will continue to do what they do because they can earn hefty sums of money or crypto coins, the good guys may choose not to.

    The Force is Strong – But which Force?

    Think for a minute what the possible scenarios maybe when Microsoft drops the ball and stops incentivising the white-hat hackers and security researchers. Any of them can turn to the dark web, sell the discovered exploits, and make up for the loss caused by a change in policy.

    Even more disturbing is that companies like Microsoft and Apple seem to be relatively slow in patching vulnerabilities unless they affect government institutions or Fortune 500 companies.

    In opposition to this, in the Open-Source world, large communities come together and establish bounty programs sponsored by large organisations, further bridging the apparent gap in security and maintenance between software that is free and open and locked-down, commercial solutions. The vendors may claim to be safe and suitable, but we cannot glimpse the code, so we don’t know the reality.