Losses from BEC scams rising fast and furious

A new report by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has shown that complaints about scams and fraud are rising now at a record high and have resulted in reported losses of up to $1.42 billion In a typical BEC scam, a criminal dupes a company’s finance department into carrying out an unauthorized transfer of funds. Importantly, the target must be fooled into believing that the request has come from an executive within the company or from an outside firm that does business with it, so the scam involves a measure of social engineering, email spoofing, or computer intrusion.

Unlike BEC, which takes aim at businesses, EAC fraud targets individuals. According to the FBI, however, the scam has recently evolved in that attackers are increasingly moving beyond money, setting their sights on the targets’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and tax statements instead.

Source: welivesecurity.com