Vendors of major U.S. companies targeted in elaborate wire fraud scheme

Using several tricks in the modern cyber con artist playbook – including phishing and email spoofing – a group of scammers thought to be based out of Nigeria are targeting third-party vendors in order to commit wire fraud against major U.S. companies.
 
Researchers with Ohio-based information security company TrustedSec have been following the group for longer than a month and observed the scammers successfully carrying out wire fraud attacks amounting to upwards of a million dollars, according to a Friday post.
 
“We were first notified of it last month and have seen a significant uptick and increase happening over that span,” David Kennedy, founder and principal security consultant of TrustedSec, told SCMagazine.com in a Tuesday email correspondence. “More than 15 large-sized companies [have been] affected that we can determine right now.”
 
Kennedy was not able to share the names of the targeted or impacted organizations, but he said these are hundred million dollar companies – some of which are in the Fortune 50 – based out of the United States and typically having an international presence.
 
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