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May 2020, Vol. 21, No. 2

AI-powered cyberattacks force change to network security

When the manager of a company's U.K. subsidiary got a call in March 2019, he recognized the voice of his Germany-based CEO on the other end of the line. They'd met before, at meetings. The manager gave little thought when the chief requested that he transfer €220,000 to a Hungarian vendor. "This guy was absolutely sure that this was a call from the German CEO, so he paid the money," said Ruediger Kirsch, a fraud expert with insurance firm Euler Hermes, which underwrote the cyberinsurance policy for the firms involved. It wasn't until the German CEO called two days later, requesting another €100,000 that the head of the UK subsidiary noticed that, this time, the phone number wasn't the right one -- it came from Austria. So he reached out to the CEO and discovered the executive had no knowledge of either of these transfers. Now worried, he called the number from which the original request came. "The UK manager said, even when he talked to [the person on the other end] a third time, he was sure it was the voice of the CEO," said ...

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