Nigerian Scammers And Hackers Steal $3 Billion Worldwide
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Nigerian hackers and cyber criminals are being accused of masterminding a grand theft of information and money running into billions of dollars, worldwide . .
According to experts , the Nigerians are able to carry out the heist by sending phishing emails to commercial organizations and industrial enterprises, which they later steal dry . .
The FBI estimates that these phishing attacks have cost companies over $ 3 billion. The number of affected companies exceeds 22, 143 . Kaspersky Labs, an internet security company , said it has found over 500 companies that are under attack in at least 50 countries. .
Those under attack are mostly industrial enterprises and large transportation and logistics corporations, based in Germany , UAE , Russia and India.
Researchers said that all indications are that these were business email compromise (BEC) attacks that have come to be associated with Nigerian cyber- criminals . Emails received by victims looked authentic enough to fool people. .
Some had attachments with names such as “Energy & Industrial Solutions W .L .L _ pdf” , “Woodeck Specifications best Prices Quote . uue” and “Saudi Aramco Quotation Request for October 2016”. .
These are well crafted emails that look legitimate and are crafted to make the victim open the malicious attachment . The emails ask the recipients to check information as soon as possible , clarify product pricing or receive goods specified in the delivery note attached. .
The malicious attachments contain RTF files with an exploit for the CVE- 2015 - 1641 vulnerability . They may also contain archives of different formats containing malicious executable files or macros and OLE objects designed to download malicious executable files .
Kaspersky discovered that the malicious files are intended to steal confidential data and install stealthy remote administration tools on infected systems. .
Using Whois services, Kaspersky found that the domains used to host the malware were registered to residents of Nigeria. Once in, the hackers compromise a legitimate email and change the banking account details .
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- Unknown: Monday, 19 June 2017 at June 19, 2017
- Label(s): news
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