Cybercrime Case Study: Analysis of Waterloo Brewing's Financial Loss

This case study examines a cybercrime incident that affected Waterloo Brewing Ltd., resulting in a financial loss of $2.1 million due to a social engineering attack. The assignment defines cybercrime, highlighting its various forms, including fraud, theft, and unauthorized access. The study details how the attack occurred, involving the impersonation of a creditor employee and fraudulent wire transfers. It explores the reasons behind the attack, such as security vulnerabilities and lack of verification protocols within the company's financial systems. The assignment also discusses the aftermath, including the reporting to authorities and the ongoing efforts to recover the lost funds. Finally, it suggests preventive measures, such as implementing robust verification processes for financial transactions, as recommended by the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, to mitigate future cyber threats. The references include sources on cybercrime and the specific incident at Waterloo Brewing Ltd.

CYBERCRIME

Description of Cybercrime term
 Cyber crime can be defined as a kind of criminal activity which computer oriented that
either targets or uses a computer network or a device for commencing a crime.
 Most of the cyber crimes are done by hackers who want to make money by committing
fraud, theft of intellectual property, violating privacy, sealing identity and in many
other ways.
 Some of the most common example of Cybercrime are software piracy, unauthorized
access to data, spreading virus and many more.
 Cybercrime cases today are increasing drastically mostly because people are unaware
of ways in which they can protect themselves and their data which provide these cyber
criminals a benefit and they commit crime.

Description of case study
What cybercrime happened
 Today even craft Breweries industry is not safe of these cyber-attacks. This cybercrime
case happened to Waterloo Brewing Ltd. where due to cybercrime they lost $2.1
million because of a social engineering cyber-attack.
 This cybercrime involved an impersonation of a creditor employee and fraudulent wire
transfer requests. This crime occurred in November, 2019.
 After this crime happened, company notified higher authorities, police, Analysis Centre
of Canada and the United States, financial transactions and report analysis center,
Finance Crimes and Enforcement Network were informed.

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Why this crime happened
 This crime happened due to some security issues within their system due to which a
hacker impersonated a creditor employee asked for multiple wire transfers.
 Waterloo Brewing says that they had a highly secure network where the employee was
unaware that the transfers dome by them are basically a kind of attack.
 Waterloo Brewing Ltd. were confident about their network and most of the time if
money is being transferred to a investor, owner etc.
 It is not being verified in a much detailed manner due to which it became one of the
main and primary reason due to this case occurred.

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How this crime happened
 This type of crime are continuously increasing and Waterloo Brewing is one of the
main example of this type of crime where actual employees of a company are asked to
transfer money only where hacker mimic to be someone else.
 This incident occurred only because Waterloo Brewing thought that they had a highly
secure network and when impersonation of a creditor employee was done, without
verification multiple transfers from account to a fake account were done.
 They are still trying to recover money they have lost but had made no assurance that
they would recover money securely or not.

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What can be done to prevent it?
 There are many ways that can help in reducing such kind of frauds to occur in future.
 One of the way has been suggested by Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, they recommends
that every organization should develop a secure way of verifying every request for
money before making any kind of payment as it will help them in identify in future
whether those requirements are made by an authentic users or a fake hacker.

References
 Fahlevi, M., and et. al., 2019. Cybercrime Business Digital in Indonesia. In E3S Web of
Conferences (Vol. 125, p. 21001). EDP Sciences.
 Waterloo Brewing loses $2.1 million from 'sophisticated' cyberattack. 2020. [Online].
Available through:<https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/waterloo-brewing-loses-2-1-million-
from-cyberattack-1.1351563#:~:text=Waterloo%20Brewing%20loses
%20%242.1%20million%20from%20'sophisticated'%20cyberattack,-The%20Canadian
%20Press&text=KITCHENER%2C%20Ont.,a%20fraudulent%20third%2Dparty
%20account.>

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