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How Israeli hackers swindle millions of dollars from top managers of international companies

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How Israeli hackers swindle millions of dollars from top managers of international companies

Fraudsters use two characters – the CEO of the company and a merger lawyer.

An Israeli-based hacker group is conducting a massive campaign to compromise corporate email (BEC attack). The main targets of the attacks are large and international companies with an annual income of more than $10 billion.

About it reported researchers from the company Abnormal Securitywho discovered the campaign. According to experts, since February 2021, the group has carried out 350 campaigns, attacking employees from 61 countries on 6 continents.

Hackers impersonate the CEO of the company where the victim works. They then pass the correspondence on to a third party, usually an M&A attorney, who must oversee the payment process.

In some cases, when the attack progresses to the second stage, the hackers ask to move the conversation from email to WhatsApp voice call. This is how scammers try to speed up the attack and reduce the likelihood of leaving traces.

In addition to using two personas—the CEO and an outside attorney—the hackers spoofed email addresses using real domains. If the target organization had a DMARC policy to prevent email spoofing, the grouping updated the sender display name to make it look like the emails originated from the CEO. The team also translates emails into the language that is primarily used by the target organization.

Traditionally, West Africa, and Nigeria in particular, has been the epicenter of corporate email scams. Of all the attacks Abnormal Security has analyzed since the beginning of 2022, 74% originated in Nigeria. The next most common country associated with BEC attacks is the UK, where 5.8% of the perpetrators are based, followed by South Africa (5.7%) and the US (3.6%).

At the same time, countries in the Asian and Middle East regions, which includes Israel, are at the very bottom of the list, being home to 1.2% and 0.5% of BEC hackers, respectively. Abnormal Security said that experts cannot unequivocally state that the threat comes from Israeli hackers – they are only sure that the attackers work from Israel.

The FBI previously released its annual Internet Crime Report , from which it follows that in 2022, losses from Internet fraud reached a five-year high and amounted to more than $10 billion. The figure is $3 billion more than in 2021. According to the report, the use of BEC (Business Email Compromise) attacks has become one of the most effective ways for cybercriminals to profit. Losses from such attacks in 2022 amounted to $2.4 billion.



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