Quote:
Originally Posted by cabmando
Wanna talk interesting scam? A friend sold a machine to a person in NY. He sends his wire instructions to the buyer. The buyer receives another email appearing to be from my friend with new wire instructions. Buyer sends money to new wire instructions without calling my friend to confirm. Buyer is now out money. How did they know about the wire instructions my friend sent?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by masraum
One of the 2 end points is compromised.
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This!
The key is: "How did your friend send wire instructions to the buyer? - Email!"
One of two things happened... (Most of the info has been posted earlier in this thread but I thought it was worth summarising)
1. [Most likely] Either your friends or the buyers email is hacked.
The scammers can connect and see either of the two email accounts - This is fairly common and people involved aren't even aware of someone looking at their email. This often happens in a work place were someone who has account information watches the email of a key person or decision maker. (usernames and passwords for individual accounts are often known by IT support people or can be reset on the email server.)
The best thing to do is change your passwords with complex ones and then depending on the situation disable and delete BOTH email accounts..
2. [Less likely] They are sending non encrypted email and someone intercepted their messages. (Most of the email being sent today is still not encrypted)
FYI: An experienced support engineer can easily find out what IP address an email was sent from.
If you have that IP address a 10 year old can find out what country you're in and what service provider you're using within that country.
Depending on *"who they are and their motivation", once they have the service provider they can find the "device" the email was sent from.
(*Law enforcement)