CEO Fraudsters Hit When Using 'Reply-To' Option

Criminals who engage in fraud CEO, also known as business mail compromise, adapt to various new tactics to highlight organizations, such as using the 'reply-to' option. That claims security PhishLabs. CEO fraud is a form of cyber crime involving financial people within an organization to receive an email that appears to come from the director.

In the email is asked to urgently make a large sum of money about. The FBI have criminals in this way for 1.2 billion dollars managed to steal. At the first attack, the criminals were using free email services company or hacked accounts to send fraudulent requests. Now they're using hacked e-mail accounts from Internet company GoDaddy. These accounts are in fact easy to reproduce through phishing attacks, support the use of the 'reply-to' option and the 'identity' feature.

Through this feature simple as the sender can specify any email address. Fraudsters use this feature for composing an e-mail to from a legitimate address of the attacked organization, such as the email address of the director. Then they fill the reply-to address an e-mail address is managed by the criminals. Most e-mail clients only show the name and hide the e-mail address, so employees do not immediately see the reply-to address.

Another change in method is that the first e-mail is concise and contains no payment details. In earlier attacks was financial controller immediately sent to the bank account and amount to. Now the fraudsters exchanged several emails before the account data is transmitted. And also for the bill is the tactic changed. Foreign accounts were first used in China, for example, now the US accounts. PhishLabs advises organizations to create more awareness among the staff and spam filters first so that fraudulent emails are blocked.

Less Than 1.2 Million Customer Data Stolen By Talk Talk

When the attack on the British provider TalkTalk took place last week and which two teenagers were arrested, less than 1.2 million customer data stolen, so the affected company has announced. At first it was unclear whether the attackers had managed to access data.

That is still the case, according to a statement from the provider's own website. The specific number of affected customers is not given, except that it is "less" than 1.2 million e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers. Less than 28,000 credit and debit card data of which the middle six figures were removed. Less than 21,000 unique bank accounts and codes, and fewer than 15,000 birth dates. TalkTalk will now inform all affected customers.

The stolen credit and debit card details can not be used for financial transactions, according to the provider. However, as a precaution decided to share bank data of the subscribers affected by the major UK banks to allow them to take extra measures. Subscribers are also advised to get a year's free to leave monitor their credit. In addition TalkTalk advises subscribers to be alert. "Although the scale of the attack is much smaller than initially believed, we advise you to be alert and to take all precautions to protect yourself from fraudulent calls and e-mails."