Social engineers are trying to convince companies to make large-dollar transfers to their own accounts, under the guise of fake merger & acquisition (M&A) deals.
It's one of the oldest gambits in cybersecurity — the advance fee scam — for a new generation, and with more on the line. Gen, the parent company of cybersecurity brands Norton and Avast, was targeted by a ruse masquerading as a corporate acquisition. Gen investigated the attempted attack and discovered the company was just one of at least five targets, all of which were at risk of losing massive sums of money.
"Scams are becoming so convincing that even the most trained eye can have trouble spotting them," says Gen security evangelist Luis Corrons, who co-authored a report on the campaign with Martin Chlumecký, senior principal threat analysis engineer at Gen.
In this case, luckily, the company was saved by an attentive employee and some cracks in the attackers' narrative. "The attackers' methodology was quite sophisticated, but their individual scenario was imperfect," Corrons says. "With a more coherent story, the same playbook could have been much more dangerous."