Researchers trick ‘CEO’ email scammer into giving up identity - velascobutarly

Businesses targeted in electronic mail scams Don't always have to play the victim. They can actually fight.

Researchers at Dell SecureWorks have documented how they identified a suspected email gouger from Federal Republic of Nigeria, by essentially playing along with the scheme to fool the attacker into revealing his true whereabouts.

Anyone can utilisation these tips, said Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks. "We'Re letting them (the scammers) give us all the information virtually themselves," he aforesaid.

The email scheme SecureWorks dealt with up to our necks a fraudster impersonating a CEO in what's known as a business electronic mail spoofing attack. The goal is often to trick a victim into wiring monetary resource to the scammer's bank account.

Although a business can train its employees to learn how to smirch these suspicious emails, that won't needs stop the attack, especially since information technology's easy for anyone to continually barrage a victim with emails, SecureWorks said.

Instead, a business organisatio' IT security staff can actually fight back and disrupt the scammer's operations. They can do this, aside foremost replying to an email scam and pretending to act like a unwary victim.

This was how SecureWorks managed to eventually nam an email scammer from Nigeria that targeted a U.S. technology company game in November. SecureWorks was brought in to investigate and decided to fool the fraudster into thinking his dodge had worked.

The scammer had dependable to trick the U.S. technology firm into wiring funds to a bank account aside impersonating its Chief executive officer. SecureWorks pretended to comply, which caused the gouger to turn greedy.

"He started asking for $18,000," said James Bettke, a SecureWorks researcher. "And then after that, he aforementioned, 'Oh that's a typo. IT's a $118,000.'"

SecureWorks

One of the emails sent past the scammer.

To try and identify the scammer, SecureWorks decided to email back a PDF-based receipt, indicating the wire channelis had been utter. In reality, the receipt was a bait that when clicked on, dispatched off the recipient's IP plow and strange vane browser entropy.

The researchers institute that their scammer was using an internet service provider in Lagos, Nigeria and was viewing the acknowledge on an iPhone.

SecureWorks continued to bet a gullible victim, by claiming the wire transfer had failed. That forced the scammer to deliver inside information to other bank accounts. The researchers past took that information and notified the responsible bank that these accounts were being victimized for fraud, shutting them down.

To find more about the gouger, the researchers sent another steerer receipt of a wire transfer that forced the recipient to enroll a legitimate cellular phone bi to view the form.

The scammer hide for the ruse. Using Facebook, the researchers found that the entered phone telephone number was tied to a user named "Seun," which the researchers conceive is a real account.

"We do it who he is," Stewart said. "We could report him to the EFCC (The Social science and Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria). But he didn't get off with any money."

And then instead, SecureWorks is publicizing information about the fraudster's scams, including the email addresses he used.

Dell SecureWorks

"If anybody has in reality forfeited money to him, and so they can approach law enforcement," James Maitland Stewart said. "That would be our best case scenario."

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/412069/researchers-trick-ceo-email-scammer-into-giving-up-identity.html

Posted by: velascobutarly.blogspot.com

Share this post