Latest news with #fraudsters
BBC News
an hour ago
- Business
- BBC News
Scammers stole £47m from HMRC in phishing attack
Scammers stole £47m from the online accounts of 100,000 people through "organised crime phishing", HMRC has tax authority said it is writing to those affected to confirm it has secured their accounts and that they haven't lost any money."These are attempts to claim money fraudulently from HMRC, not from customers," HMRC said.
Forbes
8 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
This $101 Million Startup's AI Exposes Fraudsters Disguised As Employees
North Korean spies have found ways into U.S. companies, tricking employers into thinking their legitimate workers, when they're trying to siphon off business' data. Everything seemed fine when one of Eran Barak's customers, a financial services business, hired a remote worker to do their Salesforce admin. In the interview, the man seemed capable of doing what should've been routine work, and he passed all the background checks. Two weeks into the job, though, Barak says his AI software, dubbed MIND, spotted the employee sending highly sensitive company data up to his personal cloud account. The person coming into the office turned out not to be the same person who'd been interviewed, Barak says. 'It was a completely different individual who had 'bought' the job from a professional fraudster.' With so many new risks to business' data, from accidentally employing a fraudster or losing data to North Korean spies with a similar modus operandi, or employees giving away company secrets to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, companies need new security tech to help them monitor and flag these risks. Barak, who cofounded Seattle-based cyber startup MIND in 2022, said his company's AI can prevent costly data leaks with an 'autopilot' that autonomously identifies sensitive data and helps IT teams secure it, claiming it can reduce false alerts about data leaks 'to nearly zero.' 'We want to push what we call a small language model.' On Wednesday, MIND announced a $30 million Series A round led by Paladin Capital Group and Crosspoint Capital Partners at a $101 million valuation. That follows a $10 million round in September last year after it came out of stealth. Barak says MIND's AI is far better than a human at determining the risk of a given piece of data, whether that's a batch of credit card numbers or meeting minutes, and then telling IT what layers of security are protecting them, if any. That means the AI won't leave as many 'blindspots' where sensitive data is left exposed, according to MIND's pitch. To put these insights into action, an AI agent sits on each employee's device and will detect and block data leakages either happening in the browser or via another app. 'We want to push what we call a small language model to the device itself, so we can really classify on the fly much more complex, sensitive data on the device,' Barak told Forbes. The MIND cofounders have a history in successful AI startups. Barak cofounded Hexadite, another security automation tool that was sold to Microsoft for a reported $100 million in 2017. Hod Bin Noon, MIND's VP of research and development, was a director at Dazz, which was acquired by cloud security giant Wiz for $450 million last year, with Wiz itself set to be acquired by Google for $32 billion. MIND CTO Itai Schwartz was a senior engineer at Torq, which makes AI agents focused on cybersecurity. Barak 'built one of the flagship security automation players,' said Paladin investor Gibb Witham, who led the round. He'd been on the hunt for an AI-native company to solve the problems modern AI was creating, Witham said, and the MIND team's deep cybersecurity automation experience was a major draw. Among MIND's chief competitors is another startup, CyberHaven, which hit a $1 billion valuation earlier this year on a recent $100 million raise. Both are relying on AI to do much of the work of the IT security engineer, while looking for leaks across an organization's networks. Not that Barak thinks that AI is yet good enough to be relied on to automate all security tasks. 'It won't completely replace us,' he adds. 'But I can tell you that the depth and precision of the classification that we are doing thanks to the AI, it's unreal.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
‘There's a problem at your bank': UK police raise alarm over courier fraud
You get a call with the bad news that something has gone wrong at your bank. The caller says they are from the police or the bank and that someone will be coming round to pick up your debit card. This courier takesthe card away and uses it, running up thousands of pounds in debt before you realise that something is wrong. The scam – known as 'courier fraud' – is not new, but in recent months there have been warnings about it from police forces around the UK. The Met revealed this week that it had arrested 18 people, and had recovered £250,000 and hundreds of bank cards as part of a two-month crackdown. The London force said criminals often targeted vulnerable members of the public, particularly older people, with 80% of victims aged over 65. The oldest victim the Met knows of was 101. In March, a man was jailed for a courier fraud, in which an 80-year-old woman was tricked into handing over her bank cards and pin numbers, and buying gold bars and giving them to scammers for safekeeping. In total more than £600,000 was stolen. There is a phone call from someone saying they are from the police or the bank and that they are investigating a problem with your account or your bank. They say they need you to take steps to protect your money and/or ask you to help them investigate. Sometimes they ask you to withdraw cash and give it to them for safekeeping, or for them to analyse – in one version of the scam they say someone at the bank is acting fraudulently and they will use the notes to investigate. Often they ask you to hand over your bank card. Once you have agreed you are either asked to put the cash or card in the post, or told someone would be coming round to your home to collect it. You will be put under some pressure to act quickly. In one case this year, the fraudster told his victim he was calling from Scotland Yard's Action Fraud team and that the card was needed because the police wanted to check it for fingerprints to make an arrest. The victim was told if she did not comply she would be arrested. When the courier turns up they will often pretend to be from the police. Your debit and/or credit card or cash, or sometimes victims are asked to buy gold or other assets to give to the criminals to 'look after'. Be very wary of unexpected phone calls from your bank or the police, particularly if the person on the other end of the line asks for personal or financial information. If you are worried, end the call and contact your bank or the police on a different phone – use the number on your bank card or call 101 in the UK for police. If you only have one phone, wait at least a minute before calling as scammers have been known to keep the line open and take the call. If there is no dial tone before an answer, hang up. Never hand over your money, bank cards or make purchases after an unexpected call, and never share your pin. If you have handed over your card, contact your bank immediately to cancel it. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
‘There's a problem at your bank': UK police raise alarm over courier fraud
You get a call with the bad news that something has gone wrong at your bank. The caller says they are from the police or the bank and that someone will be coming round to pick up your debit card. This courier takesthe card away and uses it, running up thousands of pounds in debt before you realise that something is wrong. The scam – known as 'courier fraud' – is not new, but in recent months there have been warnings about it from police forces around the UK. The Met revealed this week that it had arrested 18 people, and had recovered £250,000 and hundreds of bank cards as part of a two-month crackdown. The London force said criminals often targeted vulnerable members of the public, particularly older people, with 80% of victims aged over 65. The oldest victim the Met knows of was 101. In March, a man was jailed for a courier fraud, in which an 80-year-old woman was tricked into handing over her bank cards and pin numbers, and buying gold bars and giving them to scammers for safekeeping. In total more than £600,000 was stolen. There is a phone call from someone saying they are from the police or the bank and that they are investigating a problem with your account or your bank. They say they need you to take steps to protect your money and/or ask you to help them investigate. Sometimes they ask you to withdraw cash and give it to them for safekeeping, or for them to analyse – in one version of the scam they say someone at the bank is acting fraudulently and they will use the notes to investigate. Often they ask you to hand over your bank card. Once you have agreed you are either asked to put the cash or card in the post, or told someone would be coming round to your home to collect it. You will be put under some pressure to act quickly. In one case this year, the fraudster told his victim he was calling from Scotland Yard's Action Fraud team and that the card was needed because the police wanted to check it for fingerprints to make an arrest. The victim was told if she did not comply she would be arrested. When the courier turns up they will often pretend to be from the police. Your debit and/or credit card or cash, or sometimes victims are asked to buy gold or other assets to give to the criminals to 'look after'. Be very wary of unexpected phone calls from your bank or the police, particularly if the person on the other end of the line asks for personal or financial information. If you are worried, end the call and contact your bank or the police on a different phone – use the number on your bank card or call 101 in the UK for police. If you only have one phone, wait at least a minute before calling as scammers have been known to keep the line open and take the call. If there is no dial tone before an answer, hang up. Never hand over your money, bank cards or make purchases after an unexpected call, and never share your pin. If you have handed over your card, contact your bank immediately to cancel it.
The Sun
6 days ago
- General
- The Sun
I received urgent WhatsApp alert meant to save me from horror text-stealing attack – check your own messages right now
WHATSAPP is warning people to upgrade their account security to keep out fraudsters and other snoopers. I received an alert from WhatsApp urging me to switch on a passkey. Passkeys are an alternative to passwords that's much safer and faster. These rely on your face, fingerprint or a simple passcode to login. As such, passkeys can't be guessed and they're impossible to re-use too. And passwords can be leaked online - whereas a passkey can't. People mistakenly re-use passwords as well, because they're easy to forget. Re-used passwords make it all too easy for hackers to break into multiple of your accounts, and simple log-ins are easy to guess. Passkeys have none of these problems, making them much more secure. A number of tech companies such as Google are pushing people to switch from passwords to passkeys. If your phone ends up in the wrong hands they could use it to raid your messages - and even text family to scam them out of money by pretending to be you. "We send you a registration code to confirm that you own the phone number you want to use on WhatsApp," Meta explains. WhatsApp reveals exacty how to block one of your contacts "After registering your phone number with WhatsApp, you can choose to set up a passkey for future verification." "You can use your fingerprint, face, or screen lock to verify it's you with a passkey. When you register, you can use the passkey instead of an SMS." How to setup passkeys on WhatsApp To start setting up a passkey on your WhatsApp account, do the following: Go to your WhatsApp Settings Tap Account Tap Passkeys Tap Create passkey (skip this step if you're on Android) Tap Continue
