International Cricket Council loses $2.5 million in online scam, Report
International Cricket Council: The International Cricket Council (ICC), the world’s cricket governing body, reportedly lost close to $2.5 million in an internet fraud last year. The phishing incident, which started in the US, took place last year. As per reports, the ICC was repeatedly cheated by the scamster not once, not twice, but four times. Surprisingly, the authorities at the ICC’s Dubai office did not have a clue that they were being cheated.
January 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Overview of the news
- The $2.5 million loss is important because it is equal to four times the ICC grant that an Associate member with ODI status receives each year. The annual income from ICC funds for an ICC associate countries ranges from $500,000 to $1 million.
- As per the report, the ICC is conducting a probe about the incident and has reported it to law enforcement agencies in the US.
- However, the exact manner in which the scam took place is not yet known.
- It is reported that the scamster from the US acted as a vendor of the ICC and emailed the cricket body’s CFO for a payment from an email id that was apparently similar to the ICC.
What is Phishing?
Phishing is an attempt by cybercriminals posing as legitimate institutions, usually via email, to obtain sensitive information from targeted individuals. This is one of the most common scams happening around the world. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim is navigating the site, and transverse any additional security boundaries with the victim. The term “phishing” may have initially appeared in the hacker journal 2600 before 1995, when it was first employed in the cracking toolkit AOHell. It is a subset of fishing and refers to the “fish” for confidential information using lures.
Important takeaways for all competitive exams:
ICC Founded: 15 June 1909;
ICC Chairman: Greg Barclay;
ICC CEO: Geoff Allardice;
ICC Headquarters: Dubai, United Arab Emirates