Tag: cybercriminals
UK engineering giant hit by $25m deepfake scam
The firm that lost $25 million to deepfake video scammers in Hong Kong earlier this year has been revealed to be UK-based engineering firm Ove Arup. Ove Arup is known for world landmarks, including the Sydney Opera House. The company employs roughly 18,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of over £2 billion. In early February of this year, Cyber Intelligence reported that an as-yet-unidentified firm in Hong Kong had been defrauded of roughly US$25 million by criminals using deepfake video technology to pose as the company’s corporate finance officer (CFO) and other trusted colleagues. Not knowing how sophisticated even off-the-shelf deepfake video has become, the staff member who had been targeted was totally duped by what he logically assumed must be his CFO asking him to make the $25 million transfer during the course of an entirely fake but highly convincing video conference. When the attack was originally reported, the Hong Kong police gave a stark warning:
Ransomware drives corporate cyber-crime
Cybercriminals are getting greedier. According to Google subsidiary Mandiant’s M-Trends 2024 Special Report, the proportion of financially motivated intrusions grew from more than a quarter of all investigations (26 percent) in 2022 to over a third (36 percent) in 2023. Ransomware-related intrusions represented almost two-thirds of financially motivated intrusions and 23 percent of all 2023 intrusions; the remaining financially motivated intrusions included business email compromise (BEC) fraud and cryptocurrency theft. In 70 percent of cases, organizations learned of ransomware-related intrusions from external sources. In three-quarters of those cases, organizations were notified of a ransomware incident by an attacker ransom message. The remaining quarter came from external partners, such as law enforcement or cybersecurity companies. “This is consistent with the extortion business model in which attackers intentionally and abruptly notify organizations of a ransomware intrusion and demand payment,” says Mandiant.
Sextortion racket triggers US youth suicides
Financial sextortion is now the most rapidly growing crime targeting American, Canadian, and Australian youth. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has called it: “a global crisis that demands everyone’s attention” - having observed a one thousand percent increase in financial sextortion incidents over the last 18 months. In a December 2023 hearing, FBI Director Wray warned Congress that sextortion is “a rapidly escalating threat,” and teenage victims “don’t know where to turn.” Almost all this activity is linked to West African cybercriminals known as the “Yahoo Boys”, who primarily target English-speaking minors and young adults on the online social networks: Instagram, Snapchat, and Wizz, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) report, “A Digital Pandemic: Uncovering the role of ‘Yahoo Boys’ in the Surge of Social Media-enabled Financial Sextortion Targeting Minors.
LockBit Keeps Role as Biggest Global Ransomware Threat in 2023 – December 7th
According to a report by ZeroFox, LockBit was involved in more than a quarter of global ransomware and digital extortion (R&DE) attacks in 2023. The report found 30% of LockBit's attacks target Europe and 25% in North America. Despite remaining the global leader in ransomware, ZeroFox notes there to be a downward trajectory in the number of LockBit's attacks compared to 2022.
US Consumers Receive 2B Spam Calls Monthly – November 29th
According to Truecaller, US consumers were faced with two billion spam calls per month. Truecaller's Monthly US Spam and Scam Report also unveiled that around 195 million hours were wasted by answering these scam calls. The goal of these scam calls is to carry out credit card fraud, identity theft, and sensitive data collection.
IT security responsible for 14% of cyber-breaches
A staggering 14 percent of cyber incidents are due to senior IT security staff errors, compounded by a further 15% of errors caused by other IT staff. According to a new study published by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, over the last two years, 77 percent of companies experienced between one and six cybersecurity breaches, with IT security staff being directly culpable for almost a third of all cybersecurity breaches.
Ransomware gang turns SEC informant
When a top mob boss turns his co-criminals over to the authorities, the US Federal Bureau of Information labels him a ‘stool pigeon.’ Similarly, the AlphaV ransomware gang is turning informer, not on its rivals but on its victims. In what is a likely portent of things to come, the gang has had the nerve to inform on MeridianLink (MLNK) to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for being slow to report a ransomware attack that they themselves had initiated earlier in the month.
Unknown threat actor targets the US Red Cross
The cyber-war just got dirtier. A year or two back, an age in cyber-years, even the most ruthless cyber-gangs avoided attacking medical facilities to create a better public image in the eyes of the hacker community. Their stance has weakened somewhat since then, with attacks on the health sector becoming more common. But a recent attack on the US Red Cross is unusual enough to ring alarm bells outside the cybersecurity community.
Threat actors’ preferred names? Microsoft, Meta, and Google
Microsoft, PayPal, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are some of the world's most respected brands, but they're also the most impersonated. With 300,000 successful phishing attacks recorded last year in the US alone and 71% of organizations experiencing an attempted or actual business email compromise the issue is only getting worse.