Serena warns businesses of cyber attacks

Geraldton businesses are again being warned to be wary of sophisticated email scams and computer viruses, after a local construction company was compromised last week.

A virus infected the computer of Serena Giudice, general manager of Geraldton Homes, after she was contacted via email by someone she thought was a potential client showing interest in building a house.

After asking all the usual questions, Ms Giudice received a response which included a word document that purportedly was a summary of all their requirements — only to discover it was actually a means for transmitting a password-stealing virus to her computer.

“As soon as I opened that document I thought straight away that it had to be some sort of virus,” she said.

The nonsensical contents of the document betrayed the true intentions of the “client” and Ms Giudice was able to resolve the problem quickly by contacting her computer technician, however she admitted she was surprised with the level of sophistication scammers had now reached.

“Most of them are just your generic ‘you’ve won a million dollars in a UK lottery’, or ‘you’ve got a rich relative overseas’… but never anything this specific,” she said.

“The other ones are quite easy to spot, whereas this one was specifically targeted towards construction companies.”

Danni Bloomfield from Consumer Protection said their advice was to not open any attachments from unknown email contacts because that is where viruses are often embedded.

“We are seeing a lot more development with the scammers in relation to how they used to work, even as little as a couple of years ago,” she said.

“Some of the malicious viruses are tremendously damaging … we’ve had businesses lose thousands and thousands of dollars.

“The virus has taken over their computers and they’ve held it for ransom, where (they say) ‘pay this money or we’re going to wipe all your records’.”

Ms Bloomfield encouraged concerned businesses to sign up to WA ScamNet to keep informed about current scams and receive tips on how to deal with them.

“Especially with the amount going through in this day and age, it’s a really handy hint to have,” she said.