Days before the US election, phishers net $2.3m from Wisconsin Republicans
(2020/10/29)
- Reference: 1604005086
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/29/wisconsin_political_phishing/
- Source link:
As America counts down to the November 3 elections, things are tense for political campaigns. There's a lot of money flying around and the online criminals have sensed blood in the water.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin, a key battleground state which President Trump won in 2016 by less than 1 per cent, [1]has admitted that it lost $2.3m earlier this month to business email deception - where phishing emails harvest credentials and use these to submit fake or altered invoices for services (not) rendered.
The issue was first spotted on the evening of October 23, the state GOP said, and the FBI were called in the next morning. It appears that the criminals were able to doctor invoices that came from regular vendors and divert millions to other accounts. Efforts to recover the money are already underway.
"Cybercriminals, using a sophisticated phishing attack, stole funds intended for the re-election of President Trump, altered invoices and committed wire fraud," said the Badger State's GOP Chairman Andrew Hitt.
"These criminals exhibited a level of familiarity with state party operations at the end of the campaign to commit this crime. While a large sum of money was stolen, our operation is running at full capacity with all the resources deployed to ensure President Donald J. Trump carries Wisconsin on November 3.”
This is by no means a new problem. The FBI [2]reports that last year BEC cost US businesses $1.7bn and they are finding [3]innovative ways to launder funds.
Given the vast sums of money pumped into American elections, and the febrile atmosphere of the current campaigning, it's not entirely surprising that political organizations might not take the time to check the correctness of their invoices. The election could mean a big payday for crims unless processes are tightened up. ®
Get our [4]Tech Resources
[1] https://wisgop.org/statement-cyberattack/
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2019-internet-crime-report-released-021120
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/06/hushpuppi_extradited_bec_conspiracy/
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The Republican Party of Wisconsin, a key battleground state which President Trump won in 2016 by less than 1 per cent, [1]has admitted that it lost $2.3m earlier this month to business email deception - where phishing emails harvest credentials and use these to submit fake or altered invoices for services (not) rendered.
The issue was first spotted on the evening of October 23, the state GOP said, and the FBI were called in the next morning. It appears that the criminals were able to doctor invoices that came from regular vendors and divert millions to other accounts. Efforts to recover the money are already underway.
"Cybercriminals, using a sophisticated phishing attack, stole funds intended for the re-election of President Trump, altered invoices and committed wire fraud," said the Badger State's GOP Chairman Andrew Hitt.
"These criminals exhibited a level of familiarity with state party operations at the end of the campaign to commit this crime. While a large sum of money was stolen, our operation is running at full capacity with all the resources deployed to ensure President Donald J. Trump carries Wisconsin on November 3.”
This is by no means a new problem. The FBI [2]reports that last year BEC cost US businesses $1.7bn and they are finding [3]innovative ways to launder funds.
Given the vast sums of money pumped into American elections, and the febrile atmosphere of the current campaigning, it's not entirely surprising that political organizations might not take the time to check the correctness of their invoices. The election could mean a big payday for crims unless processes are tightened up. ®
Get our [4]Tech Resources
[1] https://wisgop.org/statement-cyberattack/
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2019-internet-crime-report-released-021120
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/06/hushpuppi_extradited_bec_conspiracy/
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
IceC0ld
all the polls say Biden is beating Trump for donations, and RNC is effectively running on empty, surprised they targeted GOP when Biden's lot are cash rich ?
unless Trump's team are running security the way he has run COVID 'defences'
but this is something I have always wondered about, all that money, so many temp workers around, it HAS to be easy picking compared to some other shenanigins they could have pulled, doubt this is the only one, just the one that has risen to the surface as it were
When your workers work for free,
redpawn
You get what you pay for, like Paul Manafort for instance.
High IQ thieves?
Trump himself is on record of having claimed recently that you only get hacked by people with an IQ of 197:
https://www.verdict.co.uk/trump-nobody-gets-hacked/
However, I can sympathise with the victims, having been a victim of people impersonating me to steal money from my pension funds, savings and bank accounts direct from the companies themselves.