{"id":197924,"date":"2026-03-21T05:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T09:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/laurens-countys-1-5m-phishing-fail-should-be-a-lesson\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T06:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T10:20:15","slug":"laurens-countys-1-5m-phishing-fail-should-be-a-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/laurens-countys-1-5m-phishing-fail-should-be-a-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"Laurens County\u2019s $1.5M phishing fail should be a lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laurens County\u2019s $1.5M phishing fail should be a lesson<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.postandcourier.com\/opinion\/editorials\/phishing-scam-taxpayer-money-laurens-county\/article_3ac279f4-a220-4a18-a1e9-3383e9f5edfc.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-21 05:05:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.postandcourier.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. In the run-up to this year\u2019s legislative session, a few House members filed bills aimed at improving government cybersecurity by prohibiting state and local government devices from \u201caccessing and using websites and applications that threaten cybersecurity and infrastructure from foreign and domestic threats, such as \u2018TikTok,\u2019 \u2018WeChat,\u2019 and other Chinese-owned applications.\u201dYou can understand why lawmakers would want to try that: Cyberhacking is growing exponentially \u2014 and that\u2019s even before artificial intelligence gets up to speed. So why not just tell everybody who works for government to stay away from risky sites?<\/p>\n

Ah, if only it were so simple.The obvious problem, of course, is that in order to comply with this legislation, you\u2019d have to disconnect all government computers and other electronic devices from the internet, because every website or social media site you visit or email you receive is a \u201cpotential threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click on the wrong email or even open the wrong browser page, and depending on your level of access, you\u2019ve potentially compromised your home computer, or your business, or your church or other nonprofit, or your government agency. And with it potentially money and personal information about hundreds or millions of people.In Laurens County, officials paid $1.5 million in fake invoices last year after someone believed the wrong email.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of really sophisticated cyberattacks out there, and their number and sophistication will only increase as AI proliferates and evolves. This attack wasn\u2019t one of them.This was one of the simplest and most mundane phishing scams. As The Post and Courier\u2019s Eric Connor reports, someone sent a fake invoice to the county from what appeared to be Mashburn Construction Co., a well-established South Carolina company that has done a good amount of work for the county. The invoice included the company\u2019s logo, its mailing address and all the other elements the recipient was used to seeing on those invoices, along with deposit information for a Wells Fargo bank account, which again would seem routine.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laurens County\u2019s $1.5M phishing fail should be a lesson https:\/\/www.postandcourier.com\/opinion\/editorials\/phishing-scam-taxpayer-money-laurens-county\/article_3ac279f4-a220-4a18-a1e9-3383e9f5edfc.html Publish Date: 2026-03-21 05:05:00 Source…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com\/postandcourier.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/f\/a8\/fa8032b5-19bf-45f0-809f-7989bb87ba20\/69b87db5cd8a3.image.jpg?crop=1762%2C926%2C0%2C124&resize=1200%2C631&order=crop%2Cresize","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,20,24,25],"class_list":["post-197924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity","tag-phishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197926,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197924\/revisions\/197926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}