Supermarket sweep

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Nov 1, 2007

Phishers almost get away with $10m scam.

Court documents have revealed that phishers nearly managed a whopping $10 million supermarket (bank account) sweep earlier this year.

Supervalu Inc., one of the largest grocery retail chains in the US, fell for a simple scam in which scammers sent the company emails purporting to be from two of the chain's approved suppliers, American Greetings Corp. and Frito-Lay Inc. In each case the email stated that the supplier had changed its bank account and requested that the retailer update its details and make all future payments into the new account.

Over the next four to five days Supervalu made several deposits into the fraudulent accounts, with over $6.5m being transferred into the fake account associated with the American Greetings scam and $3.6m transferred into the account associated with the Frito-Lay scam.

Fortunately, while Supervalu staff were not on the ball enough to question the authenticity of the two emails, they did eventually work out that the bank accounts into which they had deposited more than $10m were bogus. Supervalu notified the authorities and the accounts were frozen before the scammers could withdraw the funds.

A Supervalu spokeswoman attributed the quick discovery of the fraud to the company's internal controls and processes - perhaps the company will now look at including better security training for its employees in those internal controls and processes.

Posted on 01 November 2007 by Virus Bulletin

 Tags

scam phishing
twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

VBSpam tests to be executed under the AMTSO framework

VB is excited to announce that, starting from the Q3 test, all VBSpam tests of email security products will be executed under the AMTSO framework.

In memoriam: Prof. Ross Anderson

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of Professor Ross Anderson a few days ago.

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.