BEC Attacks to Exceed $9B in 2018: Trend Micro

itman · Jan 18, 2018

Business email compromise (BEC) attacks are projected to exceed $9 billion in 2018. To put that number in context, it has been less than a year since the FBI reported BEC attacks had become a $5.3 billion industry. Attacks have become more sophisticated as hackers improve their game.

BEC has grown among threat actors due to "its relative simplicity," according to a new Trend Micro report "Tracking Trends in Business Email Compromise (BEC) Schemes." Researchers analyzed BEC as a cybercriminal operation from January through September 2017, dissecting tools and strategies commonly used in these attacks to predict activity for this year.

"This particular type of attack is not going away -- it's only increasing," says Ed Cabrera, chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro.
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https://www.darkreading.com/vulnera...exceed-$9b-in-2018-trend-micro/d/d-id/1330853

Minimalist · Feb 1, 2018

BEC scams surge, cybercriminals target nearly all organizations

96 percent of organizations have received business email compromise (BEC) emails during the second half of 2017, according to Agari.

“BEC is a particularly effective attack vector because its lack of payload makes it nearly impossible for conventional email security solutions to detect and prevent,” said Markus Jakobsson, chief scientist, Agari. “At its core, business email compromise is a social engineering attack that leverages familiarity, authority and trust, which can result in billions of dollars of losses to businesses.”
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https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/02/01/bec-scams-surge/

Minimalist · Feb 21, 2018

New BEC Spam Campaign Targets Fortune 500 Businesses

Researchers have identified a wave of new business email compromise campaigns targeting Fortune 500 companies that are designed to trick victims into fraudulent wire transfers.

Researchers said the campaigns originate from Nigeria and are targeting companies in the retail, healthcare and financial markets.
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https://threatpost.com/new-bec-spam-campaign-target-fortune-500-businesses

Minimalist · Apr 20, 2018

When BEC scammers specialize

A group of BEC scammers has been focusing its efforts on the global maritime shipping industry, compromising emails accounts and attempting to trick targets into delivering considerable sums to bank accounts set up by the group.
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https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/04/20/bec-scammers-specialize/

Minimalist · Jun 25, 2018

Losses due to BEC scams are escalating

Despite falling down on the list of most often reported Internet-facilitated crimes, Business Email Compromise/Email Account Compromise is still the type of crime that results in the biggest losses.

In fact, according to the numbers released by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the victims of those crimes lost over $676 million in 2017. Compared to the 2016 numbers (over $360 million), that’s an increase of nearly 88%.
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https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/06/25/2017-internet-crime/

Minimalist · Jul 31, 2018

Business Email Compromises Way Up for Q2

Attacks targeting business email accounts continued to climb in the second quarter, according to data released today by specialist insurer Beazley. Hardest hit were organizations using Office 365, the popular cloud-based productivity solution.
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https://threatpost.com/threatlist-business-email-compromises-way-up-for-q2/

Minimalist · Aug 29, 2018

BEC Detections Soar 80%

The volume of Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks caught by a leading security provider jumped by 80% over the past quarter.

Mimecast’s latest Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA) report revealed the provider blocked over 41,000 impersonation attempts over the latest three-month period which were missed by other vendors. This could indicate its detection is getting better, rival vendors are getting worse and/or BEC attacks are becoming more popular.
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https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bec-detections-soar-80/

guest · Aug 30, 2018

BEC fraud burgeoning despite training
August 30, 2018
https://www.scmagazine.com/bec-fraud-burgeoning-despite-training/article/792553/

Business email compromises (BEC) — commonly referred to as CEO Fraud because the CEO's identity is being impersonated — continues to grow and, more significantly, succeed due to the simplicity and urgency of the attacks, according to recent study from Barracuda of some 3,000 attacks.

The study, published today, notes that of the 3,000 attacks studied, some 60 percent do not contain any phishing links.

The FBI's recommendation on defending against BEC includes this one, simple recommendation: “The best way to avoid being exploited is to verify the authenticity of requests to send money by walking into the CEO's office or speaking to him or her directly on the phone. Don't rely on e-mail alone,” Licciardo said.
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guest · Sep 5, 2018

BEC Fraud Hits 500K UK SMEs
September 5, 2018
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bec-fraud-hits-500k-uk-smes/

Business email compromise (BEC) fraud attacks soared 58% over the past year, possibly affecting as many as half a million SMEs, according to new Lloyds Bank data.
Law firms are most affected (19%), followed by HR, IT workers and finance companies.

Half of respondents to the study claimed that scammers tried to impersonate the CEO, but even more (52%) posed as suppliers, highlighting the challenge facing organizations keen to shut down this growing risk.

“The most effective way to ward against these fraudsters is to double check the details. Verify any requests for amended payments to an organization directly using established contact details,” explained Get Safe Online CEO, Tony Neate.
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guest · Oct 5, 2018

Corporate Emails and Passwords: Yours for £115, Research Shows
October 4, 2018
https://www.cbronline.com/news/digital-shadows-emails

A service to compromise corporate email accounts is available on the dark web for as little as $150 (£115), according to research by Digital Shadows published today.

The San Francisco-based company outlined the declining barriers to entry for corporate email fraud in a new piece of research that emphasised the rise in Hacking-as-a-Service, including the offer of profit sharing from such credential exploitation.
33,000 Corporate Emails + Passwords For Sale
In today’s research, the company said that it has detected more than 33,000 email addresses of finance departments that have been exposed through third party compromises. Within that number over 80 percent of the emails have password information attached or associated with them.

Digital Shadows point out in their research that: “If these passwords have been reused for corporate accounts, this may leave organizations at risk to account takeovers.”
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Minimalist · Oct 15, 2018

More Than $600K Lost by Henderson ISD After BEC Attack

Henderson Independent School District fell victim to a business email compromise attack on September 26 when crooks managed to trick Henderson's staff to send $609,615 to a fraudulent account, as reported by The Henderson News.
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https://news.softpedia.com/news/more-than-600k-lost-by-henderson-isd-after-bec-attack-523251.shtml

guest · Nov 14, 2018

Dutch Film Boss Sacked After €19m BEC Loss
November 14, 2018
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/dutch-film-boss-sacked-after-19m/

The CEO and finance director of film company Pathé’s Dutch operation were sacked after falling victim to a sophisticated BEC scam that netted the criminals €19m ($21m), it has emerged.
Finance boss Edwin Slutter and chief Dertje Meijer are now suing for unfair dismissal, according to reports based on newly released court documents.

The scam followed a tried-and-tested path, with fraudsters spoofing the email address of a higher-up: in this case the CEO of the French film company, back in March.

“To overcome this, organizations must make security awareness a priority, so C-Level executives can learn how to follow best practice, as well as being empowered to report anything suspicious.”
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guest · Nov 27, 2018

New BEC Scams Take Advantage of the California Wildfires
November 27, 2018
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...s-take-advantage-of-the-california-wildfires/

Whenever there is a tragedy, some lowlife will try to take advantage of it. Such is the case with a new round of BEC scams that try to take leverage the California wildfires to defraud their victims.

[...] things get a bit weird, because instead of asking for money to be transferred, they request that the employee go out and buy Google Play gift cards, reveal the redemption codes, and then send them back to the attacker.
According to Agari, who discovered this BEC campaign, if an attacker is sent codes they can they convert them into other currencies on underground or online markets.

"Once the criminal is in receipt of the codes, which are practically untraceable, they can then exchange them for currency from any location in the world using a multitude of online services."

With the numerous typos, grammatical issues, and the bizarre request to send assistance using Google Play gift cards as wildfire assistance, you would think that people would never fall for these scams. Unfortunately, in an overworked and fast paced environment, people may sometimes act without thinking.
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guest · Dec 5, 2018

BEC Crime Gang Lines Up 50,000 Global Execs
December 5, 2018
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bec-crime-gang-lines-up-50000/

Researchers have uncovered what appears to be a major BEC crime gang which used commercial lead-gen services to identify 50,000 executives to target.
Dubbed 'London Blue' in a new report from Agari, the group is Nigerian in origin, with collaborators in the UK, US and Western Europe. It first came to light after making the mistake of targeting the security vendor’s own CFO.

“London Blue operates like a modern corporation. Its members carry out specialized functions including business intelligence (lead generation), sales management [...]," the report explained.

After compiling the list of 50,000 executives, 71% of which are CFOs, members of the team then carry out additional research to fill in any missing details that will help personalize the scams.
According to the FBI, scammers have made over $12.5bn from BEC attacks since 2013.
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"London Blue - UK-Based Multinational Gang Runs BEC Scams like a Modern Corporation" (PDF):
https://www.agari.com/cyber-intelligence-research/whitepapers/london-blue-report.pdf

Minimalist · Dec 7, 2018

ThreatList: Gift Card-Themed BEC Holiday Scams Spike

With cyber threats rampant between Black Friday and Christmas, security experts are warning of a wave of business-style email scams hitting inboxes designed to appeal to holiday shoppers.

Attacks involve scam messages purporting to be gift card deals or links to corporate donations. According to researchers at Proofpoint, the style, technique and nature of the email scams follow a pattern of what are known as business email compromise (BEC) scams. Instead of tricking targets with fake invoices, holiday-themed BEC emails entice victims to click on gift-card offers or to donate to a charitable cause along with other corporate coworkers.
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https://threatpost.com/threatlist-gift-card-themed-bec-holiday-scams-spike/

guest · Dec 13, 2018

Cybercrooks Steal $1 Million from Save the Children Charity via BEC Attack
The international NGO still has to recover $112,000
December 13, 2018
https://news.softpedia.com/news/cyb...-children-charity-via-bec-attack-524273.shtml

The cybercriminals used the email account they infiltrated to generate false invoices and some other documents as part of a business email compromise (BEC) attack to persuade the charity to send nearly $1 million to bank accounts from Japan controlled by the bad actors.

As reported by the Globe, the attackers convinced the Save the Children employees who approved the money transfers that the funds were needed to buy solar panels for Pakistan health centers.

Even though the Save the Children Federation, the affiliate of Save the Children International, did not manage to stop the money transfers before they reached the hackers' accounts, the NGO still managed to get back almost all the funds lost in the attack except $112,000.
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guest · Jan 8, 2019

Shipping Firms Speared with Targeted ‘Whaling’ Attacks
January 8, 2019
https://threatpost.com/shipping-execs-whaling/140643/

Scammers are honing in on the shipping industry, using “whaling,” a.k.a. business email compromise (BEC) attacks, to scoop up credentials, or worse, compromise critical systems.

Hackers are launching whaling attacks to target various types of employees with some serious online (and sometimes telephone-based) social-engineering research under their belts, Pen Test Partners researchers said in a Tuesday post.

“[The motive] is likely to predominantly be stealing money, but could easily be gaining access; a number of large-scale attacks have resulted in this,” Tony Gee, security consultant Pen Test Partners told Threatpost. “Companies are getting better at securing their perimeter – but worse at training their staff to spot attacks.”
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guest · Jan 15, 2019

New Trend Sees BEC Gangs Focus on Executives for Payroll Diversion Scams
January 15, 2019
https://www.agari.com/email-security-blog/bec-gangs-payroll-scams/

The Agari Cyber Intelligence Division (ACID) has recently observed a considerable increase in attempts to divert payroll through the use of social engineering techniques. These criminal gangs have invested a great deal of resources into researching and establishing organizational hierarchies, and are undoubtedly looking to secure a return on that investment, even if a previous attempt at business email compromise has proven unsuccessful.

Like what happens in most other business email compromise attacks, these adversaries set up a temporary email account and switch the display name to the name of the individual they are attempting to impersonate.
Once the fraudulent account has been created, an email is sent to someone within the payroll organization—typically within the finance or human resources departments.

By avoiding third-party systems and asking for help from the human resources employee, the threat actor can control the entire situation and successfully divert pay into the fake account they own. Depending on how the real employee checks their bank account, this scheme can continue for weeks, or even months, before the attack is caught.
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guest · Feb 5, 2019

Exclusive: Email scammers take advantage of Gmail dot feature
February 5, 2019
https://www.axios.com/email-scammer...257-99cab0ea-ae50-4b79-a97c-4cce8e03cc03.html

An email scam outfit is taking advantage of Gmail's "dot" feature to streamline operations, according to email security firm Agari.
Gmail dots? Gmail allows users to add or subtract periods in their email addresses at will. If you own the right to someusername@gmail.com, you will receive emails sent to some.user.name@gmail.com and s.o.m.e.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com.

That may seem like a minor feature, but the vast majority of email providers treat each of those as different accounts. That allows you to sign up for multiple accounts on most websites in each of those email addresses.

Here's where the crime comes in. BEC (business email compromise) scams run many operations in parallel. If they target a government agency offering grants or tax refunds, usually that means they have to use a different address for each instance of the scam.

"Using the dots feature is the difference between creating 20 accounts on a website or monitoring one inbox," said Crane Hassold, senior director of threat intelligence at Agari.
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Agari: BEC Actors Exploiting Gmail “Dot Accounts” for Fun and Profit

guest · Feb 7, 2019

Business Email Compromise Attacks See Almost 500% Increase
February 7, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...mise-attacks-see-almost-500-percent-increase/

Business email compromised (BEC) attacks have seen an explosive 476% growth between Q4 2017 and Q4 2018, while the number of email fraud attempts against companies increased 226% QoQ.

Proofpoint’s Quarterly Threat Report for Q4 2018 says that “On average, companies targeted by BEC received about 120 fraudulent emails in the fourth quarter of the year, up from 36 in Q3 2018 and up from 21 in the year-ago quarter.”
To make BEC operations even more successful, email fraud actors will also spoof the targeted company’s domain to make sure that nothing looks out of place when the target opens and reads the attack message.

As BEC mitigation measures, Digital Shadows recommends configuring cloud accounts and Internet-facing storage devices correctly, BEC training for company employees, adding at least one level of manual controls to all wire transfers, as well as keeping an eye out for exposed company e-mail credentials.
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ronjor · Feb 13, 2019

Ex-employee sued by firm after falling for BEC scam

Liam Tung (CSO Online) on 13 February, 2019
Scottish custom publishing house Peebles Media Group is suing a former employee, Patricia Reilly, for losses stemming from nearly £200,000 of the company’s money she transferred to a business email compromise (BEC) fraudster.
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Minimalist · Feb 14, 2019

Don’t Blame Employees who fall for a BEC scam!

It’s time to stop blaming the victims of email scams and instead put in place user training, security controls, and process controls to prevent Business Email Compromise scams from occurring.
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https://blog.trendmicro.com/dont-blame-employees-who-fall-for-a-bec-scam/

guest · Mar 1, 2019

Scarlet Widow Bombs Nonprofit Directories to Run BEC Scams
February 27, 2019
https://www.agari.com/email-security-blog/scarlet-widow-bombs-nonprofit-directories/

Research we released today into a different cybergang—one we’ve named Scarlet Widow—shows how Nigerian criminals take a different tactic against more vulnerable institutions.

Rather than focusing on the large enterprises to provide hefty jackpots when compromised, Scarlet Widow preys on school districts, universities, and nonprofits, which the group believes may be softer targets. Since evolving from their historical focus on romance scams, Scarlet Widow has implemented new tactics for generating income from business email compromise attacks.

Nearly all of the leads collected by Scarlet Widow were for employees located in two countries—with 73% in the United States and 20% in the United Kingdom.
And once Scarlet Widow has successfully targeted an organization posing as an executive or other leader, it is easy for them to launder their money using nontraditional methods.
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Scarlet Widow: BEC Bitcoin Laundry—Scam, Rinse, Repeat (PDF - 2.76 MB): https://www.agari.com/cyber-intelligence-research/whitepapers/scarlet-widow-bec-scams.pdf

ronjor · Mar 19, 2019

Stealing Corporate Funds Still Top Goal of Messaging Attacks

Robert Lemos 3/19/2019
Cybercriminals focus on collecting credentials, blackmailing users with fake sextortion scams, and convincing privileged employees to transfer cash. The latter still causes the most damage, and some signs suggest it is moving to mobile.
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guest · Mar 22, 2019

Beazley data reveals a 133% increase in business email compromise incidents from 2017 to 2018
Beazley Breach Response Services publishes latest annual report
March 21, 2019
https://www.beazley.com/news/2019/beazley_breach_briefing_2019.html

Business email compromises (BEC) accounted for 24% of the overall number of incidents reported to Beazley Breach Response (BBR) Services in 2018, compared to 13% in 2017, according to a new report published today by Beazley.

The latest Beazley Breach Briefing, based on information gleaned from investigations into more than 3,300 data incidents in 2018, takes an in-depth look at how the common breaches are perpetrated, and how businesses can deal with them.
Almost half (47%) of all incidents investigated by BBR Services in 2018 were the result of a hack or malware. Of these, approximately half were BEC.
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