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Google says hackers are calling financial firm employees to hack and extort victims
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Google’s security team reports that hackers are using voice phishing (vishing) to breach U.S. financial firms and extort victims by threatening to leak stolen data.
This attack vector bypasses technical defenses by exploiting human trust. Engineers must now treat phone-based credential requests as a critical threat surface, not just email or web forms. The shift to targeting mergers and acquisitions data suggests attackers are chasing higher-value leverage, increasing pressure on firms to harden authentication workflows.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Hackers impersonate coworkers or IT staff via phone calls to trick employees into entering credentials on spoofed sites.
Stolen data is used for extortion, with ransom demands ranging from $750,000 to $3 million per victim.
Google suspects multiple hacking groups may operate under a single umbrella, complicating attribution and defense.
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