Industry and Law Enforcement Cooperation Bears Fruit in Fight Against BEC

Business email attacks, operated by attackers that have evolved from 419 scams, have continued to plague organizations with an estimated $360 million stolen in 2016 raising to $675 million in 2017, according to the FBI. Symantec identified up to 7,700 distinct organizations targeted in such attacks during 2017, with each organization being attacked an average of 4.9 times during the year. 

As well as pursuing technical measures to block such attacks against targets, since December of 2015, Symantec has been participating in a private industry and law enforcement working group with the goal of arresting business email compromise (BEC) attackers. That joint effort, by over 450 individuals spread across private sector companies and international law enforcement agencies, has helped to enable Operation Wire-Wire, resulting in the arrest of 74 individuals in recent months.

Symantec was able to contribute to this effort through the identification of email accounts and infrastructure used by various attackers. Symantec will continue to cooperate with industry and law enforcement in order to pursue additional arrests.