Resources

Guide

Anatomy of a Compromised Account

Credential phishing leads to compromised accounts, and compromised accounts lead to more credential phishing. In order to uncover the mechanics, the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division seeded more than 8,000 phishing sites with fake credentials and then monitored what happened next. In this report, you’ll discover more about how cybercriminals access and use compromised accounts...
Guide

Exaggerated Lion Threat Dossier: BEC Check Fraud Ring

Exaggerated Lion is a BEC cybercrime ring that operates out of Africa with members in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. This is one of the most prolific BEC groups ever discovered, targeting more than 3,000 employees at nearly 2,100 companies throughout the United States. Download this report for details including: How they name, register and host domains disguised to mimic...
Guide

Behind the 'From' Lines: Email Fraud on a Global Scale

Organized criminals are targeting businesses with identity deception attacks that cause financial losses and broken trust, but Agari is changing the game. Using responsible active defense techniques to analyze criminal email accounts, the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division (ACID) unmasked 10 cybercriminal groups during a 10-month period. ACID has used the results of its work to:...
Guide

Silent Starling Threat Dossier: BEC to VEC

Vendor email compromise is a new form of advanced email attack that uses compromised email accounts to target the global supply chain. With the cybercriminal group we’ve named Silent Starling, we see how devastating these attacks can be. Download the threat actor dossier to: How Silent Starling uses phishing email lures to target their victims Why compromised email...
Guide

Scattered Canary Threat Dossier

Business email compromise (BEC) has continued to grow into a billion-dollar industry as cybercriminals turn to it as their preferred scam. But with the West African gang we’ve named Scattered Canary, we have deeper insight into how BEC is connected to the rest of cybercrime, and why it has grown in recent years. Download the threat dossier to learn: How Scattered Canary grew...
Guide

Scarlet Widow Part 2: BEC Bitcoin Laundry—Scam, Rinse, Repeat

While many cybercriminal gangs scam medium-sized and large corporations, Agari has now uncovered and documented the practices of a Nigeria-based scammer group, dubbed Scarlet Widow, that has evolved a different strategy focused on more vulnerable sectors such as school districts, universities, and nonprofits. Image In this report, we...
Guide

Cosmic Lynx Threat Dossier: The Rise of Russian BEC

Cosmic Lynx is a Russia-based BEC cybercriminal organization that has significantly impacted the email threat landscape with sophisticated, high-dollar phishing attacks. In this threat dossier, you’ll discover key details about Cosmic Lynx, including: How Cosmic targets global corporations with incredibly sophisticated BEC attacks How Cosmic Lynx exploits DMARC controls to...
Guide

Threat Intelligence Brief: The Geography of BEC

Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a worldwide scourge affecting more than three-fourths of the world’s economies. Around the globe, BEC cybercriminals operate with impunity to steal $26 billion each year. The Agari Cyber Intelligence Division conducted nearly 10,000 active engagements with BEC threat actors and captured the scope of BEC’s global footprint and trends. In this...
Guide

Domains Associated with Exaggerated Lion BEC Campaigns

Below is the list of domains associated with Exaggerated Lion BEC Campaigns. You can access the PDF version of this list by clicking the "Download PDF Version" button at the top of this page. 1secure-portal-server.online admin-office-exec-ssl-secure-server-portal-exec.management admin-office-exec-ssl-secured-server-portal-exec.management admin-server-apps.management admin...
Blog

Customer Phishing Protection Couldn’t Be Easier with PhishLabs' Digital Risk Protection

It’s not news that cybercrime is a constant battle—large enterprises and small businesses everywhere are susceptible to a myriad of advanced email threats and socially engineered attacks, such as executive or brand impersonation. According to IC3’s Internet Crime Report, over $44 million in losses in 2021 were a direct result of malicious phishing and advanced email scams....
Blog

Common Phishing Email Attacks | Examples & Descriptions

What does a phishing email look like? We've compiled phishing email examples to help show what a spoofed email looks like to prevent against phishing attacks. Brand deception phishing is the most common example of phishing people will come across. Brand deception phishing occurs when an attacker mimics a trusted company in an email and asks someone for their personal...
Blog

What Is Email Phishing? Protect Your Enterprise

Phishing emails can steal sensitive data and cost companies' their reputation. However, protecting a company from these scammers doesn't need to be difficult.  What Is Email Phishing?  Phishing is when an attacker mimics a trusted person or brand in an attempt to steal sensitive information, or gain a foothold inside a company network. While phishing emails are by far the...
Blog

TLS Email Encryption: What It Is & How to Check if Your Email Is Using It

What exactly is TLS when it comes to email encryption? Image TLS, or cybersecurity protocol Transport Layer Security first developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), was designed to establish secure communications that provide both privacy and data security. Originally created from another encryption protocol called...
Blog

Inside a Compromised Account: How Cybercriminals Use Credential Phishing to Further BEC Scams

Why would a cybercriminal spend time developing malware when he can simply trick unsuspecting users into handing over their passwords? Why would a threat actor spend her money and resources on ransomware, when she can get that same information through a compromised account? It’s a good question, and exactly what the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division wanted to discover. In a...
Blog

Protecting Digital Communications During the Digital Transformation: A Look Back at Trust 2021

While we’re all Zoomed, Webexed and Teamed out after thirteen months of the pandemic, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the situation. They know we’re heavily relying on digital communications and they’re sending fake emails, pretending to be your boss. They’re sending fake invoices, pretending to be your vendor. They’re even sending fake requests for gift cards, on the...
Blog

Agari Report: New BEC Scam 7X More Costly Than Average, Bigger Phish Start Angling In

Sophisticated new threat actors, evolving phishing tactics, and a $800,000 business email compromise (BEC) scam in the second half of 2020 all signal big trouble ahead, according to new analysis from the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division (ACID). As captured in our H1 2021 Email Fraud & Identity Deception Trends Report, successful attacks on Magellan Health, GoDaddy, and the...
Blog

Cosmic Lynx Returns in 2021 with Updated Tricks

In July 2020, we published a report on a Russian-based BEC group we called Cosmic Lynx. In that report, we described the tactics used by the group, which included its targeting of senior executives at large companies with a global footprint and how it uses mergers and acquisitions (M&A) themes in its BEC email lures.Shortly after we published the report, we saw a significant...
Blog

Email Security: Agari Delivers a Whole New Level of Actionable Insight to Outpace Threat Actors

CISOs and their teams are about to get some serious performance enhancers in their high-stakes race against email security threats. According to the FBI, phishing campaigns, business email compromise (BEC) scams, and other advanced email attacks have resulted in $26 billion in business losses over the course of three years. Then 2020 happened. With 75 million corporate...
Blog

BEC Response Guide— Tips for Responding to Business Email Compromise Incidents

This post originally appeared on Medium and is published here courtesy of Ronnie Tokazowski. For more by Ronnie, follow him on Twitter @iHeartMalware.If you’re reading this and are in the middle of an incident, go to the first bullet now. The rest can wait. Malware incidents suck, but if you want to know what it’s like responding to a BEC incident, triple the carnage, shake the...
Blog

BEC Cash-out Methods: Email Fraudsters Experimenting With Alternative Approaches

Business email compromise (BEC) actors are exploring alternative cash-out methods for spiriting away the profits from their crimes. Traditional bank accounts have long been the go-to choice for email scammers seeking to cash out the funds they've pilfered from organizations they victimize. Just since 2016, BEC groups have defrauded businesses out of more than $26 billion...