Report from Irish solicitor - Munster
07/11/2016 16:35:00A fraud attempt was made on the legal firm McCarthy & Co in July 2016 through email spoofing. See details below.
Date discovered: July 2016
Type: Email Spoofing
Name of practice (if provided): McCarthy & Co
Region: Munster
Description: Our financial controller received an email that appeared to be an internal email coming from our managing partner requesting the details required to create a bank transfer. This email was replied to and looked ostensibly to go back to the internal email address to which it was sent. However, the reply email was never received by the managing partner internal email address and was instead redirected to an address outside the firm from which further emails purporting to come from the managing partner were sent to the financial controller requesting a payment to be set up. The fraud was discovered at this stage and no action was taken on foot of the requests.
Client money stolen? No
Able to quantify cost of attack to practice? No
Informed relevant authorities eg bank, police, insurers, Law Society? Yes