Security News > 2022 > February > FBI warns of BEC attackers impersonating CEOs in virtual meetings
The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned today that US organizations and individuals are being increasingly targeted in BEC attacks on virtual meeting platforms.
In a Public Service Announcement issued today, the FBI said it noticed scammers switching to virtual meeting platforms matching the overall trend of businesses moving to remote work during the pandemic.
"Between 2019 through 2021, the FBI IC3 has received an increase of BEC complaints involving the use of virtual meeting platforms to instruct victims to send unauthorized transfers of funds to fraudulent accounts," the FBI said [PDF].
Compromising employee emails to insert themselves in workplace meetings via virtual meeting platforms to collect information on a business's day-to-day operations.
According to the FBI's 2020 annual report on cybercrime, BEC scams are a very lucrative "Business," seeing that BEC attacks were behind a record number of complaints and financial losses of roughly $1.8 billion.
In previous alerts, the FBI said BEC scammers abuse cloud email services such as Google G Suite and Microsoft Office 365, as well as email auto-forwarding in their attacks.