Addresses CEO fraud schemes where attackers impersonate chief executives to trick employees into transferring funds, sharing sensitive data, or taking unauthorized actions. Covers real-world case studies, social engineering techniques behind these attacks, and organizational safeguards to prevent them.
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A Single Email Cost This Company $47 Million In 2015, Ubiquiti Networks disclosed that threat actors impersonating company executives tricked employees into wiring $46.7 million to overseas accounts. The attackers never breached a firewall. They never deployed malware. They sent emails — and those emails were enough. That's
A Single Email Cost This Company $47 Million In 2015, Ubiquiti Networks disclosed that threat actors impersonating senior executives tricked finance employees into wiring $46.7 million to overseas accounts controlled by attackers. No malware. No zero-day exploit. Just a convincing email that looked like it came from the CEO.
A Single Email Cost This Company $47 Million In 2016, Austrian aerospace manufacturer FACC fired its CEO after a whaling attack tricked an employee into wiring €42 million to a threat actor's account. The attacker impersonated the CEO via email, requested an urgent fund transfer for a fake
A Single Email Cost This Company $47 Million In 2016, Austrian aerospace firm FACC lost €42 million (roughly $47 million USD) after threat actors impersonated the CEO in a carefully crafted email to the finance department. The employee who wired the money believed they were following a direct executive order.
One Email Cost This Company $37 Million In 2024, Orion Engineering — a mid-size firm with 200 employees — wired $37 million to what they believed was a trusted overseas supplier. The invoice looked legitimate. The email thread was real. The bank details were the only thing that had changed. By the
A Single Email Cost This Company $37 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Business Email Compromise — the category that includes every CEO fraud email scam — generated adjusted losses exceeding $2.9 billion in a single year. That number has held steady as one
In May 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — the category that includes every CEO fraud email scam — caused adjusted losses exceeding $2.7 billion in 2022 alone. That made it the single most financially devastating cybercrime category the FBI tracks. Not ransomware.
In 2021, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received 19,954 business email compromise complaints with adjusted losses of nearly $2.4 billion. That made BEC the single most financially damaging cybercrime category — beating ransomware by a factor of almost 49 to 1. And those are just the
In 2016, an employee at Austrian aerospace firm FACC wired $47 million to a bank account controlled by criminals — because an email that looked like it came from the CEO told them to. The CEO was fired. The CFO was fired. The company's stock tanked. That single email
A Single Email Cost This Company $47 Million In 2015, Ubiquiti Networks disclosed that attackers impersonating company executives tricked finance employees into wiring $46.7 million to overseas accounts controlled by threat actors. No malware. No zero-day exploit. Just a carefully crafted CEO fraud email scam that exploited trust, urgency,
