A group of Nigerian scammers blamed for email fraud accelerated their attacks last year by attempting an average of more than 90,000 attacks per month.
The hacking crew, dubbed SilverTerrier by security researchers, began around 2014 as a small group that experimented with easy-to-detect hacking tools. By 2019, though, it had evolved into a team of “mature cybercriminals” who have produced 81,300 malicious software samples connected to 2.1 million attacks, according to Palo Alto Networks findings published Tuesday.
SilverTerrier specializes in business email compromise attacks, the kind of email scam in which fraudsters impersonate a victim’s coworker or friend, then ask for wire transfers.
