victim of phishing -Seagate employee
-Thousands of employee tax forms and financial information exposed
hit by similar attack -Snapchat last week
A well-crafted phishing attack against the leading company in the storage media sector, Seagate, exposed thousands of tax forms of former and current employees of the company.
The incident occurred on March 1st, when a Seagate employee received a well-crafted spear-phishing email that resembled an internal request from a senior executive of the company and demanded the tax forms (W-2) for a large number of employees.
The unsuspecting Seagate employee complied with the request and replied to the email forwarding the requested files, only to discover shortly thereafter that they had been scammed.
From the moment Seagate became aware of the incident, it notified the authorities and immediately began sending relevant updates to all involved parties. One of Seagate's former employees who received the letter passed it on to former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs, who disclosed the incident on his blog.
A company spokesperson said that the tax forms of thousands of current and former employees have been exposed, and in no case does the number exceed 10,000.
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The leaked W-2 tax forms contain detailed information about employees' earnings, as well as the amount of federal, state, and other taxes withheld from their wages. Additionally, the form also contains a multitude of personal data, such as social security numbers, home addresses, and contact information, exactly what cybercriminals need in order to file fraudulent tax returns on behalf of each victim.
Just last week, a similar incident hit Snapchat when an employee was tricked into revealing payroll information of a large number of employees.
