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Email Spoofing

Covers email spoofing techniques where attackers forge sender addresses to impersonate trusted contacts. Learn how spoofed emails bypass basic filters, the role of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in detection, and practical steps to protect your domain from spoofing abuse.

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FakeEmail

FakeEmail Scams: How Attackers Spoof Your Inbox

A Single FakeEmail Cost This Company $37 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — attacks built on fakeemail messages that impersonate trusted senders — generated over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses. That made BEC the costliest cybercrime category for the fourth

Carl B. Johnson Aug 23, 2026 5 min read
Fake Mailer

Fake Mailer Attacks: How Threat Actors Spoof Email

In 2023, a finance employee at a multinational firm wired $25 million after receiving what appeared to be emails from the company's CFO. The messages were convincing, urgent, and completely fabricated. The attacker used a fake mailer — a tool designed to forge the "From" field in

Carl B. Johnson Jul 17, 2026 5 min read
Spoof

Spoof Attacks: How Threat Actors Trick You in 2026

A Single Spoofed Email Cost This Company $47 Million In 2024, the SEC disclosed that Ubiquiti Networks lost $46.7 million after attackers used a spoof of executive email accounts to trick the finance department into wiring funds to overseas accounts. The employees thought they were following orders from the

Carl B. Johnson Jun 20, 2026 5 min read
Fake Email

Fake Email: How to Spot One Before It Costs You

In 2019, a Lithuanian national named Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to stealing over $100 million from Google and Facebook using nothing more than a series of fake email messages. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, sent invoices from a lookalike domain, and two of the most technologically sophisticated companies on

Carl B. Johnson May 06, 2026 5 min read
FakeEmail

FakeEmail Attacks: How Spoofed Messages Bypass Filters

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — the category that includes fakeemail schemes — caused over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses across roughly 21,489 complaints. That made it the single most financially damaging cybercrime category in the IC3's annual

Carl B. Johnson Apr 24, 2026 6 min read
Spoof

Spoof Attacks: How Threat Actors Trick Your Defenses

The CEO Email That Wasn't From the CEO In early 2025, a mid-sized logistics company wired $3.1 million to a bank account in Hong Kong. The CFO had received an email — apparently from the CEO — requesting an urgent wire transfer for a confidential acquisition. The email address

Carl B. Johnson Jan 17, 2026 7 min read
FakeEmail

FakeEmail Attacks: How Spoofed Messages Bypass Filters

In March 2025, a mid-size accounting firm in Ohio wired $1.2 million to a threat actor who sent a single spoofed email — a fakeemail that perfectly mimicked the CEO's display name, writing style, and even included a forwarded thread from a real conversation. The email passed every

Carl B. Johnson Dec 13, 2025 7 min read
Fake Mailer

Fake Mailer Attacks: How Threat Actors Spoof Email

In January 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — much of it powered by spoofed sender addresses — cost American organizations over $2.9 billion in 2023 alone. Behind a huge share of those losses sits a deceptively simple tool: the fake mailer. These

Carl B. Johnson Nov 06, 2025 6 min read
FakeEmail

FakeEmail Attacks: How Spoofed Messages Breach Networks

That Email From Your CEO? It Was a FakeEmail. In January 2024, a finance employee at a multinational firm in Hong Kong wired $25 million after attending a video call with what appeared to be the company's CFO and several colleagues. Every person on that call was a

Carl B. Johnson Aug 19, 2024 7 min read
Fake Mailer

Fake Mailer Attacks: How Threat Actors Spoof Emails

In January 2024, a finance director at a mid-sized logistics company wired $740,000 to a bank account in Hong Kong. The email requesting the transfer appeared to come from the CEO's exact email address — correct display name, correct domain, correct signature block. It wasn't the

Carl B. Johnson Jul 13, 2024 7 min read