Word file triggers bank transfer

After an employee of the company opened an unsuspicious Word document in an email, a money transfer was triggered. However, the amount was secured and refunded to the owner. When the attachment was opened, a Trojan was activated - invisibly to the user. The sender of the email was a well-known online store, as the Zug law enforcement authorities announced on Tuesday.

However, the cyber attack was only discovered more than a week later when the company employee tried to log in to e-banking. A first attempt had failed and the user had been instructed to try again later. When he did so a few days later, he noticed that 90,000 francs from the company account had been transferred to a third-party bank account in the meantime. He immediately alerted the police and the bank concerned.

Bank details obtained through job offer

At the same time, a woman contacted the Zurich cantonal police. She had discovered the sum of 90,000 francs in her account and had been instructed by a company to withdraw and forward the amount. For this purpose, the perpetrators used a fake identity of an existing real estate company. The woman was targeted by the perpetrators because she had been looking for a job on the Internet, police spokesman Frank Kleiner told sda. "They offered her a job at the real estate company and thus obtained her bank details." However, the deal fell through because the woman became suspicious. The 90,000 francs were frozen and returned to the Zug-based company. The police spokesman was unable to say whether the police are on the trail of the perpetrators based on the email addresses used. The investigation is still ongoing. (SDA)