Over the past several years, real estate prices have exploded. The average home in the United States sold for $278,000 at the beginning of 2012, a number that spiked to more than $450,000 in less than a decade. While this trend has been a boon for real estate owners, it has a dark side: real estate cyber fraud has surged, and cybercriminals have developed increasingly sophisticated tactics for manipulating sensitive documents and stealing money in real estate transactions.
One of the most common cyberattacks in the real estate industry is wire fraud, which refers to cybercriminals intercepting payments from buyers to legitimate financial institutions. While cybercriminals often use business email compromise to carry out these attacks, they’re increasingly deploying malware capable of corrupting files on victims’ computers and altering documents such as wire transfer instructions. This means buyers, escrow agents, lenders and anyone else involved in real estate transactions has to be on guard against a broader range of attacks than ever before.