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.
FBI warns Silent Ransom Group is callback-phishing US law firms
US law firms and legal services organisations (campaign) · United States
The FBI issued a private industry notification in May 2025 warning that Silent Ransom Group, also known as Luna Moth, had been targeting US law firms for roughly two years using callback phishing and direct impersonation of IT staff. The group steals data and extorts victims without deploying ransomware. Law firms are attractive targets because of the volume of sensitive client material they hold.
Storm-1811 email-bombs targets then poses as IT support to deploy Black Basta
Multiple organisations (campaign) · Multiple
Microsoft published research in May 2024 on Storm-1811, a financially motivated group that flooded targets' inboxes with subscription confirmations, then telephoned the overwhelmed user posing as their IT help desk offering to fix the problem. Victims were talked into granting remote control through Windows Quick Assist, after which the attackers deployed remote monitoring tools, Qakbot, Cobalt Strike and ultimately Black Basta ransomware. By late May 2024 the group had extended the same approach to Microsoft Teams.
FBI 'Phantom Hacker' alert: three-persona scam drains seniors' life savings
US senior citizens (multi-victim campaign) · United States
On 29 September 2023 the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center warned about the Phantom Hacker scam, an evolved tech support fraud that layers three impersonated personas to move a victim's entire savings. IC3 logged 19,000 tech support complaints in the first half of 2023 with losses above $542 million, with people over 60 making up nearly half of victims and 66 percent of losses. By August 2023 losses had already exceeded the whole of 2022 by 40 percent.
FTC: business and government impersonation scams hit $1.1 billion in 2023
US consumers (multi-victim campaign) · United States
An FTC data spotlight published in April 2024 found that consumers reported losing $1.1 billion to business and government impersonation scams in 2023, more than triple the 2020 figure. The FTC received over 330,000 reports of business impersonation and nearly 160,000 of government impersonation, together accounting for roughly 48 percent of fraud reports filed directly with the agency. The report documents a shift toward bank transfers, wires, ACH, Zelle and Bitcoin ATMs alongside continuing gift card abuse.
Operation Tech Trap: 29 actions against fake Microsoft and Apple support pop-ups
US consumers (multi-victim campaign) · United States
On 12 May 2017 the FTC announced Operation Tech Trap with federal, state and international partners, unveiling 16 new complaints, settlements, indictments and guilty pleas and bringing the total to 29 actions in a year against technical support scammers. Defendants included Repair All PC LLC, Troth Solutions Inc., Vylah Tec LLC, Universal Network Solutions LLC, Click4Support LLC, BigDog Solutions LLC and seven individuals connected to First Choice Tech Support LLC and Client Care Experts.
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?vector=Callback+Phishing+%28TOAD%29.