BEC Attacks Surge 20% Annually Thanks to AI Tooling with Police recently recovering over $40m headed to BEC scammers

BEC attacks have risen sharply over the past year thanks to the use of AI tools to generate scam messages, according to a new study from Vipre Security Group. Threat intelligence provider Vipre’s Email Threat Trends Report: Q2 2024 is based on proprietary intelligence from the firm and recorded a 20% increase in BEC attacks in Q2 versus the same period in 2023. It claimed that nearly half (49%) of these blocked spam emails were BEC attacks, with the CEO, followed by HR and IT, the most common targets?

Two-fifths (40%) of those BEC attacks were generated by AI, the firm claimed. Usman Choudhary,?Vipre’s CTO, warned that BEC volumes could grow exponentially as AI technology matures and is used by more threat actors. “Malefactors are now leveraging sophisticated AI algorithms to craft compelling phishing emails, mimicking the tone and style of legitimate communications,”?he added.?

The Vipre report?claims threat actors are targeting what they perceive to be sectors that have under-invested in advanced cybersecurity measures.

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A Singaporean commodity firm has had a narrow escape?after police managed to intervene to recover nearly all of the $42.3m lost to fraudsters in a business email compromise (BEC) scam.

Interpol revealed today that the unnamed firm transferred the large cash sum to a new bank account based in Timor Leste on July 15, after an email from what they thought was a legitimate supplier. It wasn’t until four days later, when the genuine supplier said it still hadn’t been paid, that the firm realized the request came from an email address spelled slightly differently to the real one.?

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Business email compromise (BEC) and ransomware were the top threats observed by Cisco Talos Incident Response (Talos IR) in the second quarter of 2024, together accounting for 60% of engagements. ?

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