Security Awareness Training Blog

CEO Fraud Blog

News about the latest CEO fraud attacks. See how the bad guys actually do this and how much money companies lose to this type of scam.

[Heads-up] Bad Guys Are Now Taking Over Email Inboxes Without Phishing Attacks

I found a great article in SecurityWeek by Alastair Paterson, the CEO of Digital Shadows. Could not have said it better myself, and he alerted everyone about an attack vector that was ...
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Hacked Law Firm Can't Claw Back $580,000 From Bank That Completed Transfer

Max Mitchell at Law.com has an interesting and rather painful story. Don't let this happen to your organization.
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[Heads-up] FIRED: Two C-level Execs Who Fall Victim To A Massive 21 Million Dollar CEO Fraud

Two top-level executives of movie chain Pathé—the Managing Director and the CFO—were fired recently, after it became clear that they fell for a massive CEO Fraud attack that could have ...
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[Heads-up] U.S. Government: "Your Weak Cyber Security Violates Federal Law"

Reuters just made me aware of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report about a recent SEC investigation of nine companies that had been victims of CEO fraud had sufficient ...
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Brand-New Tool: Domain Doppelgänger Identifies Evil Twin Domains

I gave you a heads-up a few days ago, and now I'm excited to announce the actual release of a new tool to help protect your organization from cybercriminals.
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Phishing Attack On Office 365 Account Leads To 3 Million CEO Fraud

A phishing attack on an Office 365-account enabled a 3 Mil CEO Fraud Scam at an investment firm.  Finnish antivirus company F-Secure reported on their blog. One of the employees at the ...
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[ALERT] CEO Fraud Escalates. Bad Guys Now Go After Employee Personal Address And Phone Number

KnowBe4 is observing a serious escalation of CEO Fraud. They are now requesting street addresses and personal phone numbers of employees—an attempt to contact and manipulate employees ...
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Size Still Doesn’t Matter Especially When It Comes To CEO Fraud

Lloyds Bank says that Business Email Compromise (BEC)—also known as CEO Fraud—rose by 58% in the UK over the past year. While BEC is often associated by the media with large firms, ...
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Email Impersonation aka CEO Fraud Remains on the Rise

With an average of 1 in 6 users receiving email-based impersonation attacks, it spells bad news for organizations.
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Scam Of The Week: *Another* New CEO Fraud Phishing Wrinkle

So, here's a new CEO Fraud phish: see these fresh screen shots from emails reported to us through the free KnowBe4 Phish Alert Button. Bad guys spoof the managing partner and CPA and an ...
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$250,000 CEO Fraud In A Municipal Finance Department

Local, state, and Federal authorities are investigating a phishing attack that victimized the city of Alamogordo, New Mexico. One of the city's procurement officers received what appeared ...
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FBI Warns that Business Email Compromise (CEO Fraud) is a "$12 Billion Scam"

The FBI is again warning of the threat posed by business email compromise (BEC, aka CEO Fraud) and email account compromise (EAC). Together, says the Bureau, these have cost businesses ...
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[Heads-up] Employees Sue Company For W-2 Phishing Scam. Federal Court Decides Triple Damages

Imagine my surprise when I saw a picture of myself in the blog of large North Carolina Law firm Poyner Spruill. It was all good though. They had picked up an example of a real W-2 ...
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Finally, The Criminals Pay in CEO Fraud Scam

Some good news finally. It seems that the bad guys do get caught sometimes. In this case, 70 cybercriminals in the U.S. and Nigeria.
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Surprise! What's The Country Where All The CEO Fraud Gangs Are?

A new study by Agari concludes that, despite all the attention nation-state espionage services have been getting for their phishing attacks, the big threat still comes from criminal gangs.
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The Class Action Litigation Consequences of Business Email Compromise Attacks

Sunil Shenoi, Seth Traxler and Gianni Cutri are partners at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and advise clients on a variety of data security issues, including responding to data security ...
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CEO Fraud Costs Major Airline Millions Of Dollars

This week the international carrier Japan Airlines (JAL) admitted it had fallen victim to CEO Fraud that cost it 384 million yen (about $3.39 million). The incidents took place in ...
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​Trend Micro: CEOs Are The Most Spoofed

Trend Micro researchers reported that  cybercriminals spoofed the CEO email address the most, with CFOs and finance directors being the top attack targets. In their 2017 Midyear Security ...
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MacEwan University Victim Of $11.8M CEO Fraud

CBC News reported that an Edmonton, Canada university was the victim of a $11.8 million CEO fraud attack after staff failed to call one of its vendors to verify whether emails requesting ...
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Nigerian Phishers Have Gone to School and Gotten Their CEO Fraud Diploma

The FBI calls CEO Fraud "Business Email Compromise" (BEC) and it has become a highly lucrative threat vector for attackers. According to IC3, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, ...
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