It has proved difficult to combat the various types of cyberattacks. Hospitals, government agencies, schools, and even critical infrastructure companies continue to be attacked by hackers. Researchers are trying to stay a step ahead of attackers and anticipate where they may turn next if their main hustle becomes impractical, as governments around the world and law enforcement in the United States have begun to make some progress in cracking down on Ransomware.
At the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Monday, Crane Hassold, a long time digital scam researcher, will present findings that warn that it would be logical for ransomware actors to eventually convert their operations to business email compromise attacks. In the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has found that the total amount of money stolen in BEC scam is much higher than the total amount of money pilfered in Ransomware attacks.
Business email compromise involves attackersinfiltrating a legitimate corporate email account and using it to send fake invoices or initiate contract payments that trick businesses into wiring money to criminals when they think they are just paying their bills.
The return on investment is going to be impacted because of the amount of attention being paid to the problem, says Hassold, who is director of threat intelligence at Abnormal Security. They are not going to say, "Oh, hey, you got me" and leave. There is a chance that you will have a new threat where the more sophisticated actors behind the campaigns move over to the BEC space where all the money is being made.
BEC attacks, many of which originate in West Africa and specifically Nigeria, are historically less technical and rely more on social engineering to trick victims into taking actions against their own interests. According to Hassold, a lot of the software used in ransomware attacks is built to be flexible, with a modular quality, so different types of scam artists can assemble the software tools they need for their particular hustle. Gaining access to email accounts is the first step in most campaigns and the technical ability to establish initial access would be very useful for BEC. A higher level of technical sophistication would be brought to this part of the scam.
While the most notorious and aggressive ransomware gangs are usually small teams, BEC actors are usually organized into much looser and less centralized groups, making it more difficult for law enforcement to target a central organization. It has taken a long time for global law enforcement to develop relationships with the Nigerian government to fight BEC. Countering the scale of the scam operations is still a challenge even as Nigeria puts more emphasis on BEC enforcement.
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