ICAS Data Breach? Sending Spam

ICAS Data Breach? Sending Spam

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I'm an ICAS member and this morning received an email saying an investigation had been opened on me. This email came from a genuine ICAS email address and included my Firm Name, Office Address and Office Number. Interestingly ICAS's details of my firm name include the trading name in brackets, which is exactly how proper correspondence from ICAS comes.

So it looked genuine and worrying about the investigation but there is a Word file with Macros attached that looked suspicious. I just phoned ICAS and they said a lot of spam has been sent from their email address and I should ignore it. Certainly a relief on the supposed investigation but I can only assume someone has hacked into ICAS servers successfully. 

Replies (11)

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By roblpm
20th Mar 2014 09:17

Ditto

Same here

Just cut short my morning coffee as read the email on my phone and zoomed in to the office.

They are now not answering the phone. Sorry to hear you were affected but reassuring that it isn't real. I was trying to think of who might have complained and couldn't come up with anything!!

They owe me a Latte!!

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By thomas
20th Mar 2014 09:18

Me too.. so glad you have posted. My heart sank

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By GuestXXX
17th Mar 2015 16:15

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By thomas
20th Mar 2014 09:38

so much for ICAS data security.  Quick to preach to small practitioners  :-)

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Replying to Layla:
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By roblpm
20th Mar 2014 09:46

Quite Agree

thomas wrote:

so much for ICAS data security.  Quick to preach to small practitioners  :-)

Yes!!

And we changed our firm name 2 and a half years ago. Informed by letter, and on 2 annual returns. They have only just changed it (to the wrong name) on their website after I complained as it caused an issue with a supplier. Imagine if we didn't react to at least 3 communications from a client!?!

Luckily I am personally in a far superior institute!!

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By michael@icas
20th Mar 2014 10:30

ADVISORY - SPAM EMAIL PURPORTING TO BE FROM ICAS

Just to advise that a spam email is circulating purporting to come from ICAS which says “We have received a complaint regarding your business ……..”
Please ignore and delete this email. Do not open it in case the attachments are unsafe. We are currently investigating how this occurred and apologise for any inconvenience.
Atholl Duncan,
Executive Director,
Member Engagement and Communications.

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By DMGbus
20th Mar 2014 14:02

Have ICAS computer systems been hacked?

This and another current thread suggest that the spoof eMail sender has access to data on ICAS computer systems, I think that ICAS should therefore investigate this matter as a matter of some urgency.   Whether ICAS havebreach Data Protection R

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By TimCaprica
20th Mar 2014 13:50

Surely they have

I have little doubt that they have been hacked. Otherwise I cannot see how they could both have sent it directly from an ICAS email address (it didn't come from an alias or anything like most spam) and also to have so much specific member information on the emails it could only have come from their database. 

So yes I agree, once they have had time to investigate fully, they need to say exactly what data has been compromised. 

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By TimCaprica
21st Mar 2014 10:37

Update from ICAS

Dear Tim

Update on spam email purporting to be from ICAS

We contacted you yesterday warning you of a spam email purporting to come from ICAS which stated ‘We have received a complaint regarding your business’. We asked you to please ignore and delete this and not to open any attachments in case they were unsafe.

ICAS takes the protection of our membership data extremely seriously and we have undertaken a thorough and immediate investigation into why you may have received this email. Our analysis indicates that the data has been obtained from the CA Firm search section of the ICAS website, which lists the publicly available information for those searching for a CA firm. There was no compromise of members' private information. Unfortunately, the automated collection of organisation's publicly available data online is a common occurrence and we continue to be committed to finding ways to minimise this. 

We would like to apologise again for any inconvenience and would always advise you to contact ICAS directly if you are in any doubt about any communication you receive from us, and delete the email without opening any attachments.

Kind regards,

----

That explains the knowledge of company records being how they are. But it doesn't explain how they managed to send the emails directly from an ICAS email address.

 

 

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By User deleted
21st Mar 2014 10:54

Email addresses are easy to spoof

But the comment from ICAS doesn't explain how someone's PC details were accessed. They are not, as far as I know, publicly available.

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By GuestXXX
17th Mar 2015 16:15

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