Computer Security News and Insights
A Single Fake Email Cost This Company $37 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that Business Email Compromise (BEC) schemes — built entirely on fake emails — accounted for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses across the United States. That figure only captures what
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost roughly $100 million after a threat actor called a help desk, impersonated an employee found on LinkedIn, and talked their way past security controls. No zero-day exploit. No nation-state malware. Just a phone call. That incident crystallized something I've been telling organizations for
In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — attacks built on fakeemail addresses and spoofed sender identities — accounted for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses. That made it the single most financially devastating cybercrime category they tracked. Not ransomware. Not cryptojacking. Fake
One Click Cost This Company $100 Million In 2023, MGM Resorts was brought to its knees — not by a sophisticated zero-day exploit, but by a phone call and a phishing email. Threat actors from the Scattered Spider group used social engineering to gain access, eventually deploying ransomware that disrupted operations
In 2022, a single phishing email sent to a Twilio employee led to the compromise of 163 customer accounts, including high-profile targets like Signal. The attacker didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability or brute-force a password. They sent a text message that looked like it came from Twilio'
The Email That Cost One Company $121 Million In 2019, a Lithuanian man was sentenced to five years in prison for phishing Google and Facebook out of over $121 million. He sent fake invoices from a spoofed vendor email address. Employees at two of the most technically sophisticated companies on
In 2023, a single spear phishing email cost MGM Resorts an estimated $100 million in losses and recovery. The attacker didn't blast out a million generic messages — they researched one employee, crafted one convincing message, and made one phone call to the help desk. That's the
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor social-engineered their way past the help desk with a single phone call. One conversation. No malware payload, no zero-day exploit, no sophisticated code. Just a human being who wasn't prepared for the moment. That'
In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 phishing complaints — more than any other cybercrime category. That number has only grown since. I've spent years helping organizations respond to phishing incidents, and the pattern is almost always the same: someone clicks a
In March 2024, a finance employee at a UK-based engineering firm wired $25 million to threat actors after a deepfake video call. The attackers had spoofed the company's CFO — but the entire attack chain started with a single phishing email. That first message contained at least four classic
