>crooks spoof communications from executives at the victim firm in a bid to initiate unauthorized international wire transfers.
In other words simple social engineering. These finance people are scared of their CEOs and VPs so they jump at their requests, often skipping the verficiation stage because "Bossman will get pissed if I ask him for his secondary auth. My manager told me I'd be fired if I pissed off bossman again."
If anything, the companies that get hit by such simple scams deserve to be. They clearly don't have the corporate culture and accountability to stop a simple fake money request. Lets stop blaming the technology here and start blaming the real problem: executive entitlement and the incredibly classist structures at most companies where the bottom people can't even question the top people.
This is why these scams work so well. The people in finance are petrified at questioning an executive. That shouldn't be the case, especially if they claim to be compliant with various financial and technical regulations and certification processes. A lot of good HIPPA is when everyone is too scared to tell a surgeon he can't send patient information that way or SOX if accountants are scared of their bosses.
In other words simple social engineering. These finance people are scared of their CEOs and VPs so they jump at their requests, often skipping the verficiation stage because "Bossman will get pissed if I ask him for his secondary auth. My manager told me I'd be fired if I pissed off bossman again."
If anything, the companies that get hit by such simple scams deserve to be. They clearly don't have the corporate culture and accountability to stop a simple fake money request. Lets stop blaming the technology here and start blaming the real problem: executive entitlement and the incredibly classist structures at most companies where the bottom people can't even question the top people.
This is why these scams work so well. The people in finance are petrified at questioning an executive. That shouldn't be the case, especially if they claim to be compliant with various financial and technical regulations and certification processes. A lot of good HIPPA is when everyone is too scared to tell a surgeon he can't send patient information that way or SOX if accountants are scared of their bosses.