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

Minimalist · Aug 22, 2019

Portland Public Schools Recovers $2.9 Million Lost in BEC Scam

Oregon urban school district Portland Public Schools is on track to recover roughly $2.9 million wired by district employees to a BEC scammer, after discovering the fraudulent transactions before the money left the fraudster's accounts.
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https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...schools-recovers-29-million-lost-in-bec-scam/

guest · Aug 27, 2019

Business Email Compromised (BEC) Scams Explode Under the GDPR Implementation
August 27, 2019
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190827_business_email_compromised_bec_scams_explode_under_gdpr

Business email compromised (BEC) attacks targeting American companies are exploding, with an increase of over 476% in incidents between Q4 2017 and Q4 2018. Up as well is email fraud with companies experiencing an increase of over 226%.

Critics of the recent GDPR privacy rule enactment point to this sharp rise in cyber crime as a direct result of an unintended interpretation of the regulation that allows criminals to effectively mask their identities online.
This approach to privacy has led to the unintended consequence of making it easier for individuals and/or entities with less than honorable intentions to effectively disappear online.

Faced with the ability to create malicious domains and operate online with anonymity, criminals are registering websites and email addresses created specifically to spoof legitimate businesses and employees. As a result, cybercrime has grown into a $600 billion a year business, and is expected to continue to grow until these issues are resolved.
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Minimalist · Sep 2, 2019

BEC overtakes ransomware and data breaches in cyber-insurance claims

BEC-relatedcyber-insurance claims accounted for nearly a quarter of all claims in the EMEA region, AIG said.
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/bec-overtakes-ransomware-and-data-breaches-in-cyber-insurance-claims/

Minimalist · Sep 3, 2019

Businesses Blighted by Impersonation Phishing Attacks

A new study has found that, in the last 12 months, 43% of UK SMEs were targeted by phishing attacks in which hackers impersonated members of staff. Worryingly, the instigators behind two thirds of these attacks saw their plans bear fruit.
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https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/uk-smes-blighted-by-phishing/

Minimalist · Sep 6, 2019

Over $37 Million Lost by Toyota Boshoku Subsidiary in BEC Scam

Toyota Boshoku Corporation, a car components manufacturer member of the Toyota Group, announced today that one of its European subsidiaries lost more than $37 million following a business email compromise (BEC) attack.
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https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ost-by-toyota-boshoku-subsidiary-in-bec-scam/

guest · Sep 8, 2019

Unalaska recovers $2.3M after phishing email scam
September 5, 2019
https://www.ktoo.org/2019/09/05/unalaska-recovers-2-3-million-after-phishing-email-scam/

More than $2.3 million dollars has been returned to the City of Unalaska, after a nearly two-month federal investigation into a fraudulent financial request.

Between May 15 and July 9, the city paid out $2,985,406.10 to a fraudulent bank account as a result of a phishing email scam. The sender of the email represented themselves as a known vendor and requested a change in payment method.

“It was at that point where we recognized that we had been transferring funds that were in response to legitimate invoices from a known vendor into an account that was not the vendor’s account,” said Reinders.
Federal officials were able to recover $2,347,544.43 of the nearly $3 million. The remaining $637,861.67 was not recovered, but Reinders said she expects the city’s insurance will cover the remainder of the city funds.
In a statement, FBI special agent Steve Forrest wrote that fraudulent schemes are increasing in frequency and sophistication.
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Minimalist · Sep 9, 2019

When corporate communications look like a phish

Many organizations will spend significant sums of money on phishing training for employees. Taking the form of regular awareness training, or even simulated phishes to test employee awareness, this is a common practice at larger companies.

However, even after training, a consistent baseline of employees will still click a malicious link from an unknown sender. Today, we’ll look at a potential reason why that might be: corporate communications often look like phishes themselves, causing confusion between legitimate and illegitimate senders.
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https://blog.malwarebytes.com/business-2/2019/09/when-corporate-communications-look-like-a-phish/

guest · Sep 10, 2019

Business Email Compromise Is a $26 Billion Scam Says the FBI
September 10, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...compromise-is-a-26-billion-scam-says-the-fbi/

FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) says that Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams are continuing to grow every year, with a 100% increase in the identified global exposed losses between May 2018 and July 2019.
Also, between June 2016 and July 2019, IC3 received victim complaints regarding 166,349 domestic and international incidents, with a total exposed dollar loss of over $26 billion.
The scam behind losses worth billions
Even though the number of BEC scams has also grown, the heightened awareness regarding this type of fraud scheme has also contributed to more reports coming from victims from all over the world which also added to the increased exposed losses reported for the last twelve months.
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FBI: Business Email Compromise The $26 Billion Scam

guest · Sep 12, 2019

Vermont Town Working With Police, Feds After Email Scam
September 11, 2019
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...own-working-with-police-feds-after-email-scam

Police in the Vermont town of Norwich are working with federal law enforcement officials after a town employee fell victim to an email scam.

In a news release issued Tuesday, Norwich Police Chief Jennifer Frank said an unidentified town employee was targeted by what's known as a "business email compromise scheme."
Frank did not say how much money the town lost through the scam.
The FBI says that in the last year the number of reports of such cases have doubled. They have been reported in all 50 states and 177 countries.
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guest · Sep 13, 2019

Cybercriminals Adding Sophistication to BEC Threats
September 23, 2019
https://threatpost.com/cybercriminals-adding-sophistication-to-bec-threats/148305/

Cybercriminals are boosting their game and employing new tactics to move up the chain of command with more sophisticated business email compromise (BEC) threats that pose a greater threat to organizations, according to a new report.
Advanced BEC attacks–including impersonation attacks and CEO fraud–showed a steady increase in the first quarter of 2019 and are projected to rise through the second quarter, according to the most recent Email Threat Report from security firm FireEye.

While consumers mainly use their devices and various messaging apps to communicate, business users still predominantly use email. Cyber criminals are taking great advantage of this by impersonating executives, senior managers and supply-chain partners to dupe employees into authorizing fraudulent wire transfers or providing confidential information that can be used to defraud companies, FireEye researchers said.

“Cyber criminals today continue to find creative ways to entice email recipients to open these increasingly malicious messages, which can expose them to content that has the potential to cause significant financial and/or data loss,” according to a blog post attributed to FireEye’s Chris Filart and Dallas Young.
CEO fraud in particular was a “cyber cash cow,” according to FireEye. Impersonation attacks, too, can cost companies billions of dollars as well as severely damage their reputation, researchers said.
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FireEye: The Rise of New Tactics in Business Email Compromise / Email Threat Report – Q1 2019

guest · Sep 22, 2019

Dubai company loses $53,000 in targeted cyber attack
The Dubai-based exhibitions firm fell victim to a highly sophisticated cyber attack
September 22, 2019
https://www.arabianbusiness.com/technology/428500-dubai-company-loses-53000-in-targeted-cyber-attack

A Dubai-based exhibitions firm has lost $53,000 (Dh194,700) in an elaborate phishing attack.

Binu Manaf, CEO and managing director of Cheers Exhibition, said a cybercriminal hacked his firm’s email and then used a spoofed email to trick its client to wire the funds into an overseas bank.
“This is not a crude phishing attack, but one which involves a high level of sophistication,” Manaf told local newspaper Gulf News.
The CEO said he didn’t realise the company’s email account had been hacked until one of his clients enquired if he had sent out emails seeking payments into an overseas account instead of a local bank in Dubai.

“As it turned out, our email had been hacked. Unknown to us, a cybercriminal had been scouring through all our correspondence containing details of ongoing contracts and outstanding payments,” he said.
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guest · Sep 27, 2019

Spoofing emails: The trickery costing businesses billions
September 27, 2019
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49857948

"Hey, the deal is done. Please wire $8m to this account to finalise the acquisition ASAP. Needs to be done before the end of the day. Thanks."
The employee thought nothing of it and sent the funds over, ticking it off his list of jobs before heading home.

But alarm bells started to ring when the company that was being acquired called to ask why it had not received the money.
Some of the money was clawed back by the banks, but most was lost to hackers who may have cashed out using an elaborate money-laundering network or simply moved on to the next victim.
CEO Fraud
This is a real-life example of a cyber-attack known as Business Email Compromise, or CEO Fraud.
But recently, criminals have been going for lower-hanging fruit.

"A smaller but much wider reward system will be a deliberate attempt to fly below the radar to target financial processes that are likely to have weaker controls, yet still produce attractive returns," said Dave Mount, from Cofense.
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guest · Oct 2, 2019

New Silent Starling Gang Targets 500+ Vendors in BEC Scam Twist
October 2, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...g-gang-targets-500-vendors-in-bec-scam-twist/

In a variation of the classic business email compromise (BEC) scam, a cyber gang managed to compromise email accounts of more than 700 employees from over 500 companies in 14 countries.
The twist
A new group, identified as Silent Starling by researchers at email security firm Agari, runs a more lucrative game by targeting employees at vendors. For this, the company dubs this new form of attack vendor email compromise (VEC).
According to Agari, after hijacking an email account the Silent Starling gang spends time spying on the communication with customers, "gathering intelligence, data and critical context."

"This type of attack is particularly hard to spot, as it mimics the look and feel of legitimate communication. The only difference is that the invoice sent to a vendor’s customer contains details for the scammer’s bank account instead of the vendor." - Agari
Big money game
Agari says that Silent Starling used this method to steal millions from the global supply chain.
The group is active since at least 2018 and starting the end of last year they stole more than 20,000 emails. One US-based company alone had accounts of 39 of its employees compromised.
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Agari: V is for Vendor: The Emergence of Vendor Email Compromise

guest · Oct 3, 2019

mood said: ↑

Vermont Town Working With Police, Feds After Email Scam
September 11, 2019
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...own-working-with-police-feds-after-email-scam
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Town trying to recover nearly $250K lost in email scam
October 3, 2019
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/business/technology/article235747842.html

A Vermont town is trying to recover nearly $250,000 lost this year.
Town leaders in Norwich said in a statement Thursday that the money was spent without the approval of the selectboard, and after payments weren’t included in documentation prepared by the finance department.

Also, an employee fell victim to an email scam in which four transfers in August were made to look like the town manager asked for funds, when he didn’t.
The leaders say the results of an internal investigation into what happened are expected next week.
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guest · Oct 6, 2019

mood said: ↑

Vermont Town Working With Police, Feds After Email Scam
September 11, 2019
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...own-working-with-police-feds-after-email-scam
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Norwich loses nearly $250,000 to email scam
October 6, 2019
https://vtdigger.org/2019/10/06/norwich-loses-nearly-250000-to-email-scam/

Officials said Wednesday that nearly $250,000 was stolen from Norwich’s general fund in what police described as a “sophisticated scam” that victimized a municipal employee this summer.

“We cannot overstate the anger and sadness that we feel about this loss for our town,” Langhus said in a prepared statement after the board conducted a more than two-hour executive session with Durfee, Police Chief Jennifer Frank, town Treasurer Cheryl Lindberg and town attorney Susan Gilfillan.
The activity, which appeared to be taking place in real-time, was discovered by Lindberg, and announced to residents on Aug 29.

Meanwhile, the town is conducting an internal review regarding the legitimate transfers made without Selectboard approval.
Preliminary results from that review are expected next week, Langhus said.
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Thankful · Oct 7, 2019

Homebuyers are falling for this scam, some losing their life savings:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/05/hom...r-this-scam-some-lose-their-life-savings.html

guest · Oct 8, 2019

New Report Finds Staggering Increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attacks
October 8, 2019
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-...in-Business-Email-Compromise-BEC-Attacks.html

Mimecast (NASDAQ: MIME), a leading email and data security company, announced the availability of its latest Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA).
This quarter’s ESRA report found a significant increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, emails containing dangerous file types, malware attachments and spam being delivered to users’ inboxes from incumbent email security systems.

BEC attacks, also referred to as email-based impersonation fraud, is an issue that is not going away because these attacks can easily evade many traditional email security systems on a global scale. The latest ESRA found a 269% increase in these types of attacks, in comparison to the same findings in last quarter’s report.
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guest · Oct 22, 2019

Attackers improving BEC skills
October 22, 2019
https://www.scmagazine.com/home/email-security/attackers-improving-bec-skills/

Business email compromise or impersonation attacks overall rose during the second quarter of 2019 by 25 percent with some types of attacks becoming more common and better executed.

During this period FireEye has noted attackers are increasingly impersonating executives and attempting to involve a company’s supply chain vendors as part of the attack to make it appear as if the malicious email is a legitimate request. These tactics have been honed to a point where they are easily convincing employees to take the bait.
Some of the steps being taken have been used in the past, such as spoofing the return address, but FireEye found the attackers are doing more research on their victim to better tailor the attack.

To place more pressure on the employee the email is marked urgent and to cap it off the signature, purportedly from the company exec, is added that includes name, phone number, email and address all of which are real.
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FireEye: Supply Chain Impersonation: Just Another Tool in a Threat Actor’s Bag

guest · Oct 27, 2019

Scammer Stole $500K from Ocala, FL in Spear Phishing Attack
October 25, 2019
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-s...-500k-from-ocala-fl-in-spear-phishing-attack/

A scammer stole a little more than $500,000 from the City of Ocala, Florida as the result of a successful spear phishing attack.

According to Ocala.com, an Ocala employee fell for a spear-phishing attack, one of the most common variants of phishing campaigns, near the end of October. They opened an email that appeared to come from a construction company that’s currently working with the City.
Upon seeing a payment request for services performed, the employee complied and electronically sent over $640,000 to the bank account provided in the email.
That bank account did not belong to the contractor, however.

The municipality also launched an investigation into what happened. Officials learned through this effort that the email had been a fake but that the invoice was legitimate. That being said, the City still needs to determine whether the scam began after the contractor made a legitimate request for payment.
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Ocala’s investigation into the attack remains ongoing as of this writing.
The City said it would make changes to its security policies to prevent a similar attack from occurring in the future upon completing its analysis of what happened.
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guest · Nov 1, 2019

Media Giant Nikkei Losses $29 Million to BEC Scammers
November 1, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/media-giant-nikkei-losses-29-million-to-bec-scammers/

Publishing giant Nikkei lost roughly 29 million dollars after an employee of the Nikkei America subsidiary was tricked by scammers to send the funds to a bank account they controlled.
Nikkei is one of the world's largest media corporations with around 4 million print and digital subscribers, and more than 40 affiliated companies involved in publishing, broadcasting, events, database services, and the index business.
BEC scam reported to authorities
In Nikkei America's case, the scammers requested wire transfers using fraudulent information by posing as a Nikkei executive.

"In late September 2019, an employee of Nikkei America, Inc. (New York City, United States) ('Nikkei America'), a subsidiary of Nikkei Inc. ('Nikkei'), had transferred approximately 29 million United States dollars (approximately 3.2 billion Japanese Yen) of Nikkei America funds based on fraudulent instructions by a malicious third party who purported to be a management executive of Nikkei," said the company in a press release.
Nikkei America also filed a damage report with both US and Hong Kong authorities and "retained lawyers to confirm the underlying facts" after discovering the fraudulent transfers made during late September 2019.

The company is in the process of recovering the stolen funds and is also "taking measures to fully cooperate with the investigations."
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guest · Nov 4, 2019

mood said: ↑

Scammer Stole $500K from Ocala, FL in Spear Phishing Attack
October 25, 2019
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-s...-500k-from-ocala-fl-in-spear-phishing-attack/
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BEC Fraudsters Divert $742,000 from Ocala City in Florida
November 4, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...rs-divert-742-000-from-ocala-city-in-florida/

The City of Ocala in Florida fell victim to a business email compromise scam (BEC) that ended with redirecting over $742,000 to a bank account controlled by the fraudster(s).

The city had paid the invoice the day after receiving it but the money went to the fraudster's bank account, reports Ocala Star Banner.
A report from the Ocala Police Department says that the full amount the city lost this way is $742,376.73. According to an earlier statement from Mayor Kent Guinn, the fraudulent account still had about $110,000 when they learned of the scam.
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Ocala police: Scammers swiped nearly $750,000 from city

An earlier report from Mayor Kent Guinn put the amount of the transfer about $100,000 lower.
The city’s administration declined to announce the amount of the fraud when they released information about the incident on Thursday. At the time, Guinn said there was about $110,000 left in the bank account when officials got wise to the scam.

The report also noted a similar incident that targeted the city of Naples in August. That scam netted about $700,000 and also targeted the electronic payment between the city and a construction firm.
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guest · Nov 9, 2019

mood said: ↑

Norwich loses nearly $250,000 to email scam
October 6, 2019
https://vtdigger.org/2019/10/06/norwich-loses-nearly-250000-to-email-scam/
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Vermont town set to recoup money lost in email scam
November 9, 2019
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/technology/article237197233.html

A Vermont town will recoup nearly $250,000 lost in an email scam.

Norwich Town Manager Herb Durfee says the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, the town's insurer, will cover nearly $169,000.
The Valley News reports that in addition to the insured money, Comerica Bank returned nearly $80,000, which leaves Norwich out $1,000, the cost of its insurance deductible.
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guest · Nov 18, 2019

Scammed employee will not have to repay £108,000 to employer
November 18, 2019
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/scammed-employee-will-not-have-to-repay-108000-to-employer/

Patricia Reilly was sacked from her role as credit controller at Peebles Media Group after falling victim to a “whaling” scam.
The fraudster, who is still at large, posed as the firm’s managing director Yvonne Bremner on email in 2015 and asked Reilly to make payments to an unknown company. The Glasgow-based company alleged that Reilly ignored bank warnings about making such payments.

In her defence, Reilly claimed that her employer was partly to blame because it had not provided training on identifying fraud and that she made the “relevant checks” to make sure she was following procedures correctly.
Unlike a phishing scams, whaling – or “CEO fraud” – is highly targeted and involves a criminal masquerading as a senior executive.

“Although I consider her unilateral decision to transfer company funds without any authority was in breach of contract I do not consider that the loss that ensued was the natural consequence of the breach.”
The judge said he was not satisfied with evidence suggesting that the fraudster’s email address was visible, nor that the language in the email should have raised suspicion.
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guest · Nov 22, 2019

Waterloo Brewing loses $2.1 million in cyberattack
Company was duped into sending wire transfer to fraudulent account
November 21, 2019
https://www.newhamburgindependent.c...loo-brewing-loses-2-1-million-in-cyberattack/

The Kitchener-based beer maker said Thursday that a "social engineering cyberattack" by a sophisticated third party resulted in a wire transfer of the company's funds to a fraudulent account.
The incident occurred in early November and involved the impersonation of a creditor employee. Waterloo Brewing CEO George Croft declined an interview request Thursday.

In a news release, the company said it is "actively taking measures to recover the funds," but there are no assurances their efforts "will result in the return of all or a portion of the misappropriated funds in a timely manner or at all."

"At this time, the company does not believe that its systems were breached or that any personal information of its customers is at risk," the company's statement said.
"The attackers really know who they need to impersonate, whom they need to talk to, what amounts they can request," Kerschbaum said. "They're very capable of constructing a believable lie."
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guest · Dec 5, 2019

‘Ultimate’ MiTM Attack Steals $1M from Israeli Startup
December 5, 2019
https://threatpost.com/ultimate-mitm-attack-steals-1m-from-israeli-startup/150840/

Hackers pulled off an elaborate man-in-the-middle campaign to rip off an Israeli startup by intercepting a wire transfer from a Chinese venture-capital firm intended for the new business.

New research by Check Point Software details how the security vendor uncovered the wire-transfer heist, in which an attacker used unique tactics—including communicating through email and even canceling a critical in-person meeting–to fool both parties on either end of the transfer, researchers said.
Check Point became involved in the incident when a $1 million wire-transfer made between the two parties never reached the startup, researchers said in a report posted online Thursday.

“The first domain was essentially the same as the Israeli startup domain, but with an additional ‘s’ added to the end of the domain name,” researchers wrote
“Every email sent by each side was in reality sent to the attacker, who then reviewed the email, decided if any content needed to be edited, and then forwarded the email from the relevant lookalike domain to its original destination.”
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Check Point: Incident Response Casefile – A successful BEC leveraging lookalike domains

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