Bad Guys Are Now Taking Over Email Inboxes Without Phishing Attacks

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According to an alert published earlier this year by the FBI, Business Email Compromise (BEC) and Email Account Compromise (EAC) have caused $12 billion in losses since October 2013. Traditionally, social engineering and intrusion techniques have been the most common ways to gain access to business email accounts and dupe individuals to wire funds to an attacker-controlled account. These methods play out as follows:
  • Social engineering and email spoofing: Attackers will use social engineering to pose as a colleague or business partner and send fake requests for information or the transfer of funds. These emails can be quite convincing as the attacker makes a significant effort to identify an appropriate victim and register a fake domain, so that at first glance the email appears to belong to a colleague or supplier.
  • Account takeover: Here, attackers use information-stealing malware and keyloggers to gain access to and hijack a corporate email account, which they then use to make fraudulent requests to colleagues, accounting departments and suppliers. They can also alter mailbox rules so that the victim’s email messages are forwarded to the attacker, or emails sent by the attacker are deleted from the list of sent emails.
These techniques have served threat actors well for quite some time. But now we are seeing new, more expeditious methods emerge to gain access to business email accounts. Compromised credentials being offered on criminal forums, exposed through third-party compromises, or vulnerable through misconfigured backups and file sharing services, make the opportunity to profit from BEC easier than ever. Email inboxes are also being used not just to request wire transfers, but to steal financially-sensitive information stored within these accounts or to request information from other employees. With declining barriers to entry for BEC, and more ways to monetize this type of fraud, we can expect the losses to continue to rise and perhaps even accelerate in the near term. Here’s how these alternative methods work:
  • Paying for access. It’s common for accounts to be shared and sold across criminal forums, and the emails of finance departments and CEO/CFOs are no exception. It’s even possible to outsource this work to online actors who will acquire company credentials for a percentage of earnings or a set fee beginning as low as $150.
  • Getting lucky with previously compromised credentials. As I’ve discussed before, individuals will often reuse passwords across multiple accounts. With many email and password combinations of finance department email accounts already compromised, cybercriminals can get lucky.
  • Searching across misconfigured archives and file stores. Inboxes, particularly those of finance departments and CEO/CFOs, are replete with financially-sensitive information such as contract scans, purchase orders, and payroll and tax documents. This information can be used for fraud or re-sold on forums and marketplaces.
Cyber risk managers worldwide agree that people are the weak link when it comes to an organization’s exposure to malware–and hackers use social engineering tactics to exploit the people problem. Stepping all employees through new-school security awareness training is an absolute must “piece of the defense-in-depth puzzle” to protect your network. Users become your last line of defense and your essential, additional security layer: an effective human firewall. Cyber-attacks are rapidly getting more sophisticated. GDR Group will help train your employees to better manage the urgent IT security problems of social engineering, spear-phishing and ransomware attacks. Take the first step now and email [email protected] to request a quote for security awareness training for your organization.