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quietus [soylentnews.org] writes:

This one screams for a movie adaptation, but fast.

In February this year, Hong Kong police announced that a major firm had been victim of a successful impersonation attack.

Now the Financial Times has revealed the firm involved was Arup engineering -- builder of, among others, the Sydney Opera Building, the Gherkin [thegherkin.com] in central London, Guangzhou Opera House, and others [arup.com].

What happened [deloitte.com] was that an employee in the finance department was invited for a video conference with the CFO and other 'senior officers'. During that video conference, this employee was given the order to funnel a total of $25 million (US) to 5 local bank accounts through 15 transactions, which the employee duly did. After what were quite possibly a couple of sleepless nights, she decided to check with her higher-ups, which (one presumes) resulted in a few heart arrythmias.

Turns out that everybody else on that video conference call was a digital fake.

The current working hypothesis is that the scammer(s) used past online conferences to train AI to digitally recreate a scenario where the CFO ordered money transfers. So that adds public video postings as an additional headache to CIOs, CFOs and just about anyone who has decision power over rather large amounts of money. As if phone and Whatsapp scams [mcafee.com] aren't already bad enough.

Now, remember: this is news because it hit a big company. But let your schadenfreude not stand in the way of a bitter realisation: the inescapable economic trend is that what was once reserved for the rich, will be made accessible for the ordinary people too.

In a few years time, we'll be looking back with tender nostalgia to those Nigerian princes and their eternal banking problems.

Original Submission