Resources

Press Release

How International Scam Artists Pulled Off an Epic Theft of Covid Benefits

Covid-19 provided ample opportunities for threat actors to exploit weaknesses in online systems. In this article by NBC News, spokespeople from Agari explain how one threat actor group, Scattered Canary, used email to fraudulently claim Covid relief unemployment benefits potentially worth millions of US dollars. Read the full article here . Agari’s Cyber Intelligence Division is dedicated to...
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? 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 Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, you may hear others use SSL and TLS...
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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 growing trend known as...
Press Release

Trust 2021 Empowers Cybersecurity Organizations with New Insights and Actions to Stop Phishing

FOSTER CITY, Calif. and LONDON (April 15, 2021) – Interest in the Trust 2021 conference soared in the wake of the newly released FBI IC3 fraud report that stated business email compromise (BEC) and other email-based threats accelerated. An analysis of the reports showed that financially motivated fraud added up to $3.5 billion in losses, equaling 70% of all cybercrime losses in 2020. CISO...
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 off-chance that...
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 SolarWinds "hack of...
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 decrease in Cosmic...
Press Release

Are Organizations Neglecting Business Email Compromise?

While ransomware is rightly positioned as the most immediate cybersecurity threat, businesses shouldn't underestimate the threat business email compromise (BEC) attacks present to organizations. In this article, Ciaran Rafferty, Managing Director,, discusses the release of the NCSC’s annual review for 2021 and looks at the implications for email security. Originally published in Computing Security...
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 employees even now still...
Press Release

Agari Outperforms Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Expectations; Uncovers Cybercriminals Behind COVID-19 Unemployment Fraud; Earns Industry Recognitions for Innovation

FOSTER CITY, CA and LONDON (Jan. 6, 2021) -- Agari, the market share leader in phishing defense solutions for the enterprise, today announced performance results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2020. Highlights include: 33% global customer growth First to identify one of the cybercriminal rings behind U.S. CARES Act Fraud First to uncover Russian “BEC” cybercriminal...
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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 snow globe, set...
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 worldwide. But over the...
Blog

BEC Attacks: What They Are, How to Spot Them, and What to Do

Here we’ll cover what BEC attacks are, how they work, what they usually look like, and how to handle them. What is a BEC Attack? 7 Common BEC Attack Patterns Top Identity Deception Techniques How Can BEC Attacks be Stopped? What's the Best Way to Recover From a BEC Attack? What is a BEC Attack? First, let me explain what a BEC attack is. In short, Business Email Compromise phishing occurs when...
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The Global Reach of Business Email Compromise (BEC)

Over the last five years, Business Email Compromise (BEC) has evolved into the predominant cyber threat businesses face today. Since 2016, businesses have lost at least $26 billion as a result of BEC scams and, based on the most recent FBI IC3 report , losses from BEC attacks grew another 37 percent in 2019—accounting for 40 percent of all cybercrime losses over the course of the year. The...
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Agari Fall ' 20 Release Boosts CISO Confidence in Enterprise DMARC Deployment

With cyber gangs leveraging business email compromise (BEC) attacks that actively exploit their targets' level of DMARC adoption, CISOs have been ratcheting up email security. Until now, the need to dial up defenses against imposters posing as senior executives in email attacks has been increasingly forcing legitimate business correspondence into quarantine. The chain reaction kneecaps commerce...
Blog

Why Full DMARC Protection is a Pressing Business Imperative in 2020 and Beyond

If you haven't deployed Domain-based Messaging Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) to protect your brand from being impersonated in phishing scams, there are pressing reasons to jump on it now. Without a doubt, these are extraordinary times for individuals and organizations alike as we've been forced to change the way we work, shop, play, and live seemingly overnight, and for far...
Blog

DMARC: How Phishing Rings Can Use Your Email Authentication Controls Against You

In the first reported case of its kind, a phishing ring in Eastern Europe is exploiting companies' own Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance ( DMARC ) controls to impersonate CEOs in business email compromise (BEC) scams worth millions. As detailed in our new threat actor dossier on a group we call Cosmic Lynx , the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division (ACID) has identified...
Blog

Business Email Compromise: New Shift in BEC Threat Landscape Puts CISOs on Notice

A seismic shift in the email threat landscape has CISOs bracing for sophisticated new forms of business email compromise (BEC) scams, as phishing's center of gravity begins to tilt from West African email scammers toward Russian and Eastern European cybercrime lords. As detailed in our new threat actor dossier on a threat group we call Cosmic Lynx , the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division (ACID) has...
Blog

Cosmic Lynx: A Russian Threat Hits the BEC Scene

“At some point, Russian and Eastern European cybercriminals are going to start thinking to themselves, ‘Why am I spending all of this time and money setting up infrastructure and hiring malware developers when I can just send someone an email, ask them to send me money, and they’ll do it.’” For more than a year, this is a line we have used over and over again, expecting that some of the world’s...
Blog

Agari Summer '20 Release: CISOs Gain Unique Threat Intel to Their Organizations

With business email compromise (BEC) scams up sharply amid the coronavirus pandemic, CISOs have been forced to scour an expanding but largely inscrutable email threat landscape in hopes of fending off costly attacks—until now, that is. In an industry first, the new Agari Summer '20 Release offers CISOs access to real-world intelligence on specific phishing threats unique to their organizations...