The scammers

The scammers

The scammers control the account where the funds were transferred. They spoof the domain name of the bank and hacked email addresses. The attackers started with phishing attacks of the finance department, posting themselves as the CEO and authorized payment to a foreign account (Daly, 2019). The incident was discovered during the annual auditing, where it was suspected to be a private setting; the case is still ongoing, while the CEO got dismissed from work for not putting the measure to prevent such incident.

The incident for the Austrian aerospace firm FACC AG was not different from Belgian Cralen Bank; the criminals hacked the CEO and sent a phishing email to an accountant, authorizing the transfer of the fund to a fake project account. The accountant acted on what he dully believed was instructions from the CEO. The cyber-attack activities were facilitated and executed from outside the company (Kirk, 2016). The attack led to the dismissal of the CEO and reported an operating loss of Euro 23.4 million in year 2015/2016 (Appendices 2). Cybercriminals have proved to be experts in making fraudulent transactions through compromising email systems of a company and login details, making the operation appear authorized personnel has instigated and approved the transfer. It requires proper training on cybersecurity that one will notice or suspect such moves.

The BEC scammers use your connections against you, as the above cases. Using the CEO or CFO’sCFO’s email, giving instructions is something that cannot neglect. People act promptly without having a second thought (Bonnema, 2018). The reason being, the email comes from a reliable source; this is how fraudulent succeed in most cases. They use well-organized techniques or methods such as;-

Gather Intel– Fraudulent spend months planning for an attack. Gathering information such as names, addresses, appointments to gain the victim’svictim’s trust, then advance in obtaining more information Bonnema, (2018).