Protecting organizations from AI-assisted executive impersonation and invoice fraud


Threat actors are increasingly improving their tactics to make suspicious emails look like legitimate email notifications to potential victims, deploying techniques that impersonate internally sent emails from executive team members. While this technique is not new, the adoption of AI has enabled threat actors to improve their campaign templates and construct emails tailored to their recipients. Additionally, threat actors are incorporating multiple techniques within the same email to improve the overall narrative further.

In this blog, we will discuss a recent campaign observed using third-party email delivery infrastructure to send out over a million financial fraud scam emails that displayed multiple indicators consistent with the use of generative AI during email template creation. The threat actor impersonated CEOs of multiple target companies, attempting to convince accounts payable departments of the same companies to process an Automated Clearing House (ACH) payment of nearly $50,000. To add legitimacy, the actor included a forwarded email thread (and a fabricated invoice) between the impersonated CEO and ServiceNow (which was also being impersonated).

Read more…
Source:  Microsoft News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Patch Tuesday – June 2025

    June 10, 2025

    Microsoft is addressing 67 vulnerabilities this June 2025 Patch Tuesday. Microsoft has evidence of in-the-wild exploitation for just one of the vulnerabilities published today, and that is reflected in CISA KEV. Separately, Microsoft is aware of existing public disclosure for one other freshly published vulnerability. Microsoft’s luck holds for a ninth consecutive Patch Tuesday, since neither ...

  • ConnectWise rotating code signing certificates due to security concerns

    June 9, 2025

    ConnectWise is updating the digital signing certificates used in ScreenConnect, ConnectWise Automate, and ConnectWise RMM due to concerns raised by a third-party researcher about how ScreenConnect handled certain configuration data in earlier versions. In addition to issuing new certificates, ConnectWise is releasing an update to improve how this configuration data is managed in ScreenConnect. This issue ...

  • 5 Things Security Leaders Need to Know About Agentic AI

    June 9, 2025

    From writing assistance to intelligent summarization, generative AI has already transformed the way businesses work. But we’re now entering a new phase where AI doesn’t just generate content, but takes independent action on our behalf. This next evolution is called ‘agentic AI’, and it’s moving fast. Amazon recently announced a dedicated R&D group focused on agentic ...

  • Sleep with one eye open: how Librarian Ghouls steal data by night

    June 9, 2025

    Librarian Ghouls, also known as “Rare Werewolf” and “Rezet”, is an APT group that targets entities in Russia and the CIS. The group has remained active through May 2025, consistently targeting Russian companies. A distinctive feature of this threat is that the attackers favor using legitimate third-party software over developing their own malicious binaries. The malicious ...

  • Fortinet Flaws Exploited by Qilin Ransomware

    June 8, 2025

    Fortinet was recently found to have certain vulnerabilities that hackers like the Qilin group exploited. Here’s how they manipulated these weaknesses: Misconfigurations in security appliances provided a direct entry point for Qilin.Outdated Software: Failure to update Fortinet software allowed the ransomware to exploit known vulnerabilities. Qilin also employs social engineering tactics to gain unauthorized access: Phishing Attacks: Targeting employees ...

  • GoldenEye Dog(APT-Q-27) gang’s recent use of “Silver Fox” Trojan stealing activities

    June 6, 2025

    GoldenEyeDog (tracked internally as APT-Q-27 by Qi’anxin) is a hacking group targeting people involved in gaming and dog-pushing in Southeast Asia, as well as the overseas Chinese community, with a range of business activities including remote control, mining, DDoS attacks, etc. It is related to a larger attack group tracked by Qi’anxin, the Miuuti Group. The ...