Gone phishin'

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Tara Fadenrecht
  • 22nd Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan. --  Team McConnell, along with the rest of the Air Force, is observing National Cyber Awareness Month throughout October, to educate users about the dangers associated with cyber crimes.

Identity theft, fraud, financial exploitation and invasion of privacy are just a few examples of cyber crimes that occur every day.

McConnell Airmen are held accountable for protecting the country and keeping
information safe as well as protecting themselves and their own personal information, said Master Sergeant Lucinda Landry, 22nd Communications Squadron section chief of wing information assurance.

"The internet is basically a playing field," she said. There are bad people out there. The more our enemy knows about us the more vulnerable it makes us. If our adversaries can get a hold of that information, it puts everybody at risk."

The 22nd CS held an exercise in which a phishing attempt was initiated through a base-wide email, said Airman 1st Class Chance Trybe, 22nd CS cyber surety technician.

The email was sent from a gmail account, had a misspelled word and did not include a digital signature even though it contained an attachment. Together, those three indicators were red flags that Airmen should have been aware of, he said.

"Look before you click on a link," said Trybe. "Make sure you know what it is, and who it's from."

Although the email was only an exercise, it easily could have been a real attempt to gain access to the wing's network. A successful attempt could compromise operational security information.

"All it takes is for one person to click on the wrong email to give our adversaries access to our network," said Landry. "The whole point of this month is to make sure that people are paying attention, they're staying vigilant, they're protecting themselves and our network here at McConnell as much as possible."