How the FBI director nearly fell for a phishing attack
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in FBI, cybercrime, phishing on
It was a big day for the FBI as it announced that it had charged 100 people over what FBI director Robert S. Mueller has called the ‘the largest international phishing case ever conducted’.
The criminal gang was successful in getting hundreds, if not thousands of people to give up the personal information to be used in a million dollar banking fraud.
Yet in a speech in San Francisco yesterday, FBI director Robert S. Mueller revealed that he was almost a victim of a phishing attack.
He said: “Not long ago, the head of one of our nation’s domestic agencies received an email purporting to be from his bank.
“It looked perfectly legitimate, and asked him to verify some information. He started to follow the instructions, and then realised that this might not be a good idea.
“It turned out that he was just a few clicks away from falling into a classic internet ‘phishing’ scam - phishing with a PH. This is someone who spends a good deal of his professional life warning about the perils of cyber crime. Yet he barely caught himself in time.
“He should definitely have known better. I can say this with certainty, because it was me.”
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