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It was later found that the email address
impersonating Mr Kahlbetzer was a different
address, having a single character altered,
although it had been manipulated to appear
exactly as is it were Mr Kahlbetzer himself. The
fraudster then transferred the funds into various
account scattered across the globe, including
countries such as the US, Hong Kong, Britain,
the United Arab Emirates, Ghana and Nigeria.
Tim Bentley, the ANZ Managing Director of
Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm discussed the
severity of these scams across Australia: “These
scams will usually come in a clever guise thanks
to a lot of background information collected by
the attacker, usually via LinkedIn. They could
pretend to be an existing supplier or a trusted
person with authority in the organisation.”
“Something like a credit card scam or a
ransomware attack might mean $10,000, or a
couple of bitcoins. BEC attacks mean huge sums
which can undermine a smaller company and
significantly rock a larger one. The attackers go
for as much as they can, and even tech-savvy
companies such as Facebook and Google have
been taken for more than $100 million over the
last two years.” (Smart Company)
“Businesses were found to
be the target of approximately
40% of security breaches.”
(Source: ITRC Data Breach Reports)
According to statistics from the FBI, there was a
2,370% increase in identity theft losses across the
globe during 2016, with reports being filed by 131
countries reporting the scam. Between the October
2013 and December 2016, businesses around the
world lost as much a USD$5.3 billion to email
fraudsters, marking a significant ongoing issue to
companies of all sizes.
GOVLINK » ISSUE 2 2018