ceo fraud

April 7, 2016

FBI: $2.3 Billion Lost to CEO Email Scams

This post was originally published on this site The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week warned about a “dramatic” increase in so-called “CEO fraud,” e-mail scams in which the attacker spoofs a message from the boss and tricks someone at the organization into wiring funds to the fraudsters. The FBI estimates these scams have cost organizations more than $2.3 billion in losses over the past three years. In an alert posted to its site, the FBI said that since January 2015, the agency has seen a 270 percent increase in identified victims and exposed losses from CEO scams. […]
December 29, 2016

Happy Seventh Birthday, KrebsOnSecurity!

This post was originally published on this siteHard to believe it’s time to celebrate another go ’round the Sun for KrebsOnSecurity! Today marks exactly seven years since I left The Washington Post and started this here solo thing. And what a remarkable year 2016 has been! The word cloud above includes a sampling of tags used in stories on KrebsOnSecurity throughout the past year. It’s been a wild one, riddled with huge attacks, big cybercriminal busts and of course a whole mess of data breaches. The biggest attack of all — the 620 Gbps distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault against this site […]
February 2, 2017

IRS: Scam Blends CEO Fraud, W-2 Phishing

This post was originally published on this siteMost regular readers here are familiar with CEO fraud — e-mail scams in which the attacker spoofs the boss and tricks an employee at the organization into wiring funds to the fraudster. Loyal readers also have heard an earful about W-2 phishing, in which crooks impersonate the boss and request a copy of all employee tax forms. According to a new “urgent alert” issued by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, scammers are now combining both schemes and targeting a far broader range of organizations than ever before. The IRS said phishers are off to a much […]
June 23, 2017

FBI: Extortion, CEO Fraud Among Top Online Fraud Complaints in 2016

This post was originally published on this siteOnline extortion, tech support scams and phishing attacks that spoof the boss were among the most costly cyber scams reported by consumers and businesses last year, according to new figures from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The IC3 report released Thursday correctly identifies some of the most prevalent and insidious forms of cybercrimes today, but the total financial losses tied to each crime type also underscore how infrequently victims actually report such crimes to law enforcement. Source: Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). For example, the IC3 said it received 17,146 extortion-related […]