FBI: Business- and Email Account Compromise Attack Losses Hit $5 Billion

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports business email compromise (BEC) and email account compromise (EAC) attacks caused $5.3 billion in exposed loss for global and domestic companies between October 2013 and December 2016. Victims, which come from 50 states and 131 countries, reported a total of 40,203 incidents in the same time period.

This report marks a significant uptick from the FBI's last report in June 2016, when it said threat actors had tried to steal $3.1 billion since October 2013. The IC3 reports a 2,370% increase in exposed losses related to BEC/EAC scams between January 2015 and December 2016.

The FBI began tracking BEC and EAC as a single crime type in 2017 as the techniques for each become increasingly similar. Not much is known about how victims are selected but most are studied with social engineering prior to attacks. Asian banks in China and Hong Kong are the primary recipients of fraudulent funds, though the UK is also a popular destination.

Read more details here.