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:
- Dangerous new botnet targets webcams, routers across the world
January 22, 2025
Cybersecurity researchers from the Qualys Threat Research Unit have observed a new large-scale operation exploiting vulnerabilities in IP cameras and routers to build out a botnet. In a technical analysis, Qualys said the attackers were mostly exploiting CVE-2017-17215 and CVE-2024-7029, seeking to compromise AVTECH IP cameras, and Huawei HG532 routers. The botnet is essentially Mirai, although ...
- 7-Zip bug could allow a bypass of a Windows security feature – update now
January 22, 2025
A patch is available for a vulnerability in 7-Zip that could have allowed attackers to bypass the Mark-of-the-Web (MotW) security feature in Windows. The MotW is an attribute added to files by Windows when they have been sourced from an untrusted location, like the internet or a restricted zone. The MotW is what triggers warnings that ...
- Conduent confirms outage was due to a cybersecurity incident
January 22, 2025
U.S. government contractor Conduent, which provides technology to support services such as child support and food assistance, has confirmed that a recent outage was caused by a cybersecurity incident. Conduent confirmed the disruption, which left some U.S. residents without access to support payments, to TechCrunch on Tuesday but declined to say whether the outage was related ...
- Odds & Ends: Unraveling the Surebet Playbook
January 22, 2025
The global sports betting market has seen explosive growth in recent years, fueled by the rise of online gambling platforms, increased internet access and penetration, and the legalization of betting in numerous countries. As of 2023, research showed that the global sports betting market was valued at around $92.1 billion, with projections suggesting it could ...
- ChatGPT API vulnerability could enable large-scale DDoS attacks
January 21, 2025
A security flaw in OpenAI’s ChatGPT application programming interface could be used to initiate a distributed denial-of-service attack on websites, according to a researcher. The discovery was made by Benjamin Flesch, a security researcher in Germany, who detailed the vulnerability and how it could be exploited on GitHub. According to Flesch, the flaw lies in the ...
- eCommerce data breach exposes details on half a million users
January 21, 2025
The North Pole Company, a Canadian gift basket delivery service, allegedly suffered a data breach in which half a million customers lost sensitive personal information. The claim was made on BreachForums, a popular underground community where cybercriminals come to share tools, resources, and experiences, to find partners and plan future attacks. As cybersecurity researchers from Incogni ...