Symantec, reputed for providing analytics on cyber security, storage and
systems management solutions has raised an alarm that cyber criminals
operations are becoming increasingly sophisticated, just as they target French
companies.
The latest alert made available to DigitalSENSE Business News by
the Group Public Relations Manager, Europe, Middle
East and Africa (EMEA) Mid-Size & Growth Countries, Ms Katie Beck made this
revelation, saying that Symantec had reported additional information about the
highly unusual, very aggressive social engineering tricks being employed by
attackers targeting multiple French-based companies.
Beck said that the goal of the latest scheme
is to wire funds to an offshore account.
Many organizations and their banks employ
defenses to prevent unauthorized money transfers, however, but leveraging a
convincing array of email, phone, fax and other communications targeting the
victims, Symantec said, the attackers have been able to defeat each of the
defensive practices.
“In most cases, the first victim was an
administrative assistant or accountant within the organization,” part of the
release read.
In cases where the initial victim did not have
rights to wire funds, the report added, the attacker used the victim’s
credentials to identify an employee within the accounting department that had
this authority.
Notably, Symantec says attacks were indeed
originating from a mobile network and that the attacker is uses MiFi cards (GSM
cellular radios that can provide Internet access to a computer system through the
mobile phone network) and was on the move when conducting the attacks.
“… Making the attacker extremely difficult to
trace, since finding a moving MiFi card requires active on-the-ground on-call
personnel with special equipment and the telecom provider’s assistance to
triangulate the location,” Symantec report revealed.
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