At least thirteen hundred Dutch financial directors are victims of a hacker group. The hacker group London Blue has compiled a list of their data and wants to commit CEO fraud. Strikingly enough, the data was obtained in a legal manner.
Financieele Dagblad reports this on the basis of information from cybersecurity company Agari. Chief analyst Crane Hassold has stated that the data has often been obtained in a legal manner. These are for sale on the legal data market. In the case of these leaks, London Blue obtained the data from two US companies that make such lists in order to sell to commercial parties.
CEO fraud
London Blue is using the data to commit CEO fraud. This means that the hackers e-mail a financial director asking him to transfer money. They send these mails on behalf of the general manager, for which they use the information to make the mails look as real as possible.
Only last month it appeared that the Pathé cinema chain lost nineteen million euros in this way. Of these, the affected members of the Management Board have been suspended. Whether other Dutch companies were affected by the hacker group and which directors are on the list is not known, Agari could not say anything about that.
Growing problem
CEO fraud is a growing problem. Recent research has shown that the number of attempts to do so increased to 222 in 2017. In 2016, there were 135 instances of CEO fraud. As a result, companies are also incurring heavy losses. Last year 1.4 million euros and in the first eight months of this year sun 2.5 million euros. It is therefore a growing problem that calls for solutions.
Barracuda Networks is fighting it by setting up Sentinel, a service aimed at combating fraudsters who are active via e-mail. According to Alain Luxembourg, Regional Manager Benelux of Barracuda, who wrote a guest contribution, an approach to this must include both intelligent software and human knowledge. Read all about it in his guest contribution.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.