Social engineering incidents
277 entries spanning 1995 to 2026. Filter by how the attacker reached the human, what it cost, and whether AI was involved.
Yahoo network breached via spear-phishing email, 500 million accounts stolen
Yahoo! Inc. · United States
In 2014 attackers obtained access to Yahoo's internal User Database and Account Management Tool and stole data associated with roughly 500 million accounts. The US Department of Justice indicted two FSB officers and two hackers in March 2017. Reporting on the indictment stated the intrusion began with a spear-phishing email sent to a Yahoo employee in early 2014, and that only one recipient needed to click for the attackers to gain a foothold.
Rimasauskas BEC scheme defrauds Google and Facebook of over $120 million
Google LLC and Facebook, Inc. · United States
From roughly 2013 to 2015 Evaldas Rimasauskas registered a Latvian company using the same name as Quanta Computer, a genuine Asian hardware supplier to two large U.S. internet companies, and invoiced them for goods and services the real supplier had delivered. Payments totaling more than $120 million were wired to accounts he controlled in Latvia and Cyprus and then laundered through several countries. He was arrested in Lithuania in March 2017, extradited in August 2017, pleaded guilty in March 2019, and was sentenced on December 19, 2019 to five years in prison.
RSA SecurID breach begins with '2011 Recruitment Plan' spear phishing email
RSA Security (EMC) · United States
In March 2011 attackers stole information related to RSA's SecurID two-factor authentication product after two small groups of RSA employees were sent spear phishing emails carrying a booby-trapped Excel attachment. RSA executive Uri Rivner publicly described the lure email as being titled '2011 Recruitment Plan.' The stolen SecurID data was subsequently used in attempted intrusions at US defense contractors, and RSA offered to replace tokens for customers.
HP boardroom pretexting scandal: investigators impersonate directors to phone carriers
Hewlett-Packard directors, journalists and their family members · United States
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed criminal charges on 4 October 2006 against former HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn, former HP ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker and three outside investigators. To identify the source of boardroom leaks to the press, investigators obtained the private telephone billing records of 12 people by impersonating them to phone carriers. Personal identifying information for 13 board members, journalists and family members was obtained and used unlawfully. Each defendant faced four felony counts.
Entry types: Incident, Campaign, Benchmark. Aggregate agency statistics are kept as benchmarks and are never summed into the counters. Methodology. Machine-readable version of this page: global-social-engineering-impact-da.vercel.app/api/incidents?sector=Technology.