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High-Profile Cases
January 2015Xoom - Internet money transfer service, San Francisco, CA August 2015Ubiquiti Networks - Computer networking company, Silicon Valley January 2016FACC AG - Aerospace company, Austria RESULT: CEO and CFO were fired April 2016Unknown US Company RESULT: Scam surfaced when the US government filed a lawsuit to recover $25 million April 2016Schletter Group - Worldwide manufacturer, North American division LOST: W-2 information of all 200 employees RESULT: Employees filed class-action lawsuit, the court allowed the employees to seek treble damages from Schletter. Schletter since filed for bankruptcy. April 2016Mattel - Toy manufacturing company, El Segundo, CA RESULT: Luckily they caught the scam right away and were able to recover all of their money May 2016Crelan Bank - Belgium RESULT: The CEO claims they are still viable and operating at a profit May 2016Pomeroy Investment Corp - Troy, MI RESULT: The error wasn't noticed for 8 days, by then the money was long gone August 2016Leoni AG - Cable manufacturer, Germany September 2016SS&C Technologies Holdings - Financial services software firm, Windsor, CT RESULT: The CEO was ousted and the company is now facing a $10 million lawsuit by Tillage Commodities Fund, the firm whose money was lost November 2016City of El Paso, Texas January 2017Sedgwick County, Kansas January 2017Campbell County Health, Wyoming LOST: 1,457 Employee Social Security Numbers March 2017Facebook and Google April 2017Save The Children RESULT: The scam was undiscovered for a month, so cybercriminals got away with all the money. The funds were recovered via the organization's insurance carriers. June 2017Southern Oregon University July 2017Gorbel - US manufacturing company September 2017MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada September 2017Japan Airlines December 2017O’Neill, Bragg & Staffin - Pennsylvania law firm RESULT: Lost lawsuit filed against Bank of America, claiming the bank was responsible for not stopping the transaction. The firm is now permanently closed. July 2018City of Alamogordo, New Mexico September 2018Unnamed Finnish Investment Firm RECOVERED: $3 million euro October 2018Lake Ridge Schools - Lake County, Indiana November 2018Pathé - French cinema chain, film production and distribution company RESULT: Managing Director and CFO fired When the big boss says "jump," generally employees say "how high." Now, a new cyberscam is capitalizing on that mentality to fool its victims. "[It's] the perfect storm for this type of fraud to happen,” said Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify, a Santa Clara, California-based cybersecurity company. It’s known as business email compromise or CEO fraud. The fraudsters send an email that looks all too real requesting a wire transfer or personal information on employees. Thinking they’re helping the boss, employees comply. According to the FBI, the incidents of the scam increased 270 percent in the first four months of 2016. From October 2013 through February 2016, law enforcement received reports from 17,642 victims, amounting to $2.3 billion lost. Victims include social media company SnapChat and Seagate Technology, a data storage company. In both cases employees sent W-2 information to someone they thought was the CEO. Cybersecurity company Centrify was almost one of those victims. “I came into the office one day and I sit near the accounting department, and someone said, 'Hey we're working on that wire transfer you requested.' I'm like 'What are you talking about? I didn't request a wire transfer,'” Kemp said. A member of his accounting department received an email chain that seemed to come from Kemp and Centrify’s CFO, Tim Steinkopf, requesting a wire transfer for more than $357,000. “It just looked like normal business communication. Then we stared at the email and then we noticed that the 'i' and the 'f' were flipped around,” he said. The swindlers had created a domain that looked just like Centrify’s and had likely also done sophisticated research. “We were shocked at the level of sophistication that they would create a fraudulent domain that looked like our domain and also were able to research who's who in our accounting department and try to figure out who could actually initiate a wire transfer.” Kemp said. While the Centrify team researched what was going on, emails kept coming in from the fake executive. “The crook was actually communicating with us in real time, trying to nudge us along to actually initiate the wire transfer,” said Kemp. Centrify tried to track down the criminals and called the company Vistaprint, which had registered the look-alike domain. "They admitted that morning that 60 other look-alike domains were created. These domain registration companies, they really don't require any information or any credit card information to set up a domain, at least first 30 days,” Kemp said. “Each domain registration goes through various fraud and credit card checks to ensure payment is verified. ... The email address being used is also run through a variety of proprietary checks to flag potential fraud. ... This is unfortunately an issue that all domain providers face. ... Every single complaint about the misuse of a domain is investigated,” said Alfredo Ramos, Vistaprint’s head of digital products, in an email statement. Centrify CEO Tom Kemp and CFO Tim Steinkopf had fraudsters fake emails from them requesting wire transfers. CNBC Protect yourselfTo prevent being a victim, companies need to educate their employees about business email being compromised. If something looks off, make a phone call to confirm, even if it means calling the CEO. "I've told the people here at Centrify that I will never ever send an email asking for a wire transfer or to send personal identifiable information to me. ... So anytime you get a request from someone with an email address of don't believe it. If need be, pick up the phone and actually call me," Kemp said. He also suggests that companies have a separation between who can initiate and who can approve a wire transfer. The FBI advises using multifactor authentication, which requires two ways
of identifying yourself when signing into an account, such as a password and a code sent to your cellphone. "You really need to step up your game in terms of making sure that you don't have this occur to yourself and your companies," Kemp said. What are 4 types of phishing?Types of Phishing Attacks. Spear Phishing.. Whaling.. Smishing.. Vishing.. What are two of the most common phishing attacks made on an organization?The 5 most common types of phishing attack. Email phishing. Most phishing attacks are sent by email. ... . Spear phishing. There are two other, more sophisticated, types of phishing involving email. ... . Whaling. Whaling attacks are even more targeted, taking aim at senior executives. ... . Smishing and vishing. ... . Angler phishing.. What are examples of phishing attacks?Phishing attack examples
A spoofed email ostensibly from myuniversity.edu is mass-distributed to as many faculty members as possible. The email claims that the user's password is about to expire. Instructions are given to go to myuniversity.edu/renewal to renew their password within 24 hours.
What should you do if you receive a phishing email?If you suspect that an email or text message you received is a phishing attempt:. Do not open it. ... . Delete it immediately to prevent yourself from accidentally opening the message in the future.. Do not download any attachments accompanying the message. ... . Never click links that appear in the message.. |