Agari, a world class cyber-security firm has come up with report showing that emerging dreaded set of hackers based in Nigeria is trying to trick thousands of top executives mainly Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) across the globe to hit their deep pocket accounts.
Relying on attacking via e-mails after gathering addresses either from email extractor or insider intelligence, it was discovered that Agari, which investigated the group, has also come under attack recently.
The email security firm said that during its investigation, it got hold of a list of the group’s potential targets this year that contained more than 50,000 finance executives, of which 71 per cent were CFOs.
Details from CNN Business, earlier this week showed that their key targets included firms in a very broad range of sectors from small businesses to the largest multinational corporations.
The attackers are carrying out an increasingly common scam known as “business email compromise (BEC)” in which they attempt to pose as a company insider, such as the CEO, requesting a money transfer to an outside account.
Agari said that the Nigerian group, which it calls “London Blue,” has developed a highly sophisticated operational strategy to dupe money out of finance executives.
Agari, which declined to reveal how it secured the data, other than saying it had actively engaged with the scammers, said it had shared the info with the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (UK) law enforcement agents.
