FIRE team research on the Scripted Sparrow BEC operation was covered in Cyber Security News, highlighting how the group uses automation to generate and send attack messages at scale. The article details how attackers impersonate executive coaching and leadership training firms, rely on spoofed reply chains to build credibility, and carefully structure invoices to stay below financial approval thresholds. It also points to technical indicators uncovered by Fortra analysts, including automated PDF generation and operational missteps that expose the group’s infrastructure.
Originally published in Cyber Security News.
Excerpt: “Recently, Fortra analysts identified that the group has evolved its tactics to bypass security filters. Instead of attaching malicious documents directly, they sometimes intentionally omit them, prompting the recipient to reply and ask for the missing files. This conversation builds trust before the final payload is delivered.”