Sophos CEO targeted by email scammer

Steve Munford is the Chief Executive Officer of Sophos. When he comes down to my floor and walks towards my desk, I realise I better look smart and pay attention to what he has to say.

It turned out that Steve wasn’t delivering my P45, but instead wanted to tell me that he had received an email.

Dear Steve Munford,

I am Dominic Jefferson, Attorney to Late Mr. R Munford, he worked as an Independent Contractor in Togo. June 2008, he, wife and their only daughter were involved in a car accident. I need your assistance in repatriating the fund USD10.5M, left behind by my Late client.

Seeing as he runs a computer security company, Steve knew that it was an email scam.

But what Steve found strange is that his dad was a “Mr R Munford”, and he did work in West Africa, and he did pass away fairly recently.

However, there were some mistakes too. Steve’s dad wasn’t married, and he didn’t have a daughter…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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