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Cybersecurity News

FBI Report Says Ransomware Complaints Doubled in 2015

May 26, 2016

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received a record number of complaints from users infected with ransomware in 2015.

According to the IC3's 2015 Internet Crime Report, there were 2,453 ransomware complaints in 2015, up from 2014's total of 1,402. IC3 officials estimate that these infections caused damages of more than $1.6 million to the affected parties.

Other cyber-crimes in the report include identity theft (21,949 complaints), personal data breaches (19,632 complaints), credit card fraud (17,172 complaints), confidence/romance fraud (12,509 complaints), business email compromise (BEC) (7,837 complaints), malware (3,249 complaints), corporate data breach (2,499 complaints), and Denial of Service (1,020 complaints)

In 2015, BEC scams also saw a huge rise in complaints, causing losses of $246 million.

The FBI says that BEC scams involve a twist on the typical phishing emails, and aim to trick executives or finance employees who have authority over a company’s money. The emails are designed to fool the victim into transferring large sums of money–often tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars–to accounts controlled by the criminals. The messages typically look like they come from the CEO or CFO of the target company and often have spoofed email addresses, headers, and all of the signature and other details an authentic email would have. Many times, the emails will ask the victim to transfer money as part of some new acquisition or supplier relationship, which doesn’t exist.

The full report is at https://pdf.ic3.gov/2015_IC3Report.pdf
 

KEYWORDS: cyber security data breach malware ransomware

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