W-2 / Payroll Direct Deposit Fraud
Attack Trigger
Attacker impersonates an employee or HR officer to redirect salary or harvest W-2 tax data
What Attackers Want
Full pay cycle per employee ($2,000–$20,000) or mass W-2 data for fraudulent tax refunds
How This Attack Works
In the payroll variant, attackers impersonate employees and send HR a direct deposit change request, routing the next paycheck to a criminal account. In the W-2 variant, someone impersonating a senior executive emails the HR or payroll team requesting all employee W-2 forms "for an audit," enabling mass identity theft and fraudulent tax filings.
Red Flags to Watch For
- ✗Direct deposit change request arrives by email without a callback verification step
- ✗Request originates from a personal Gmail or Hotmail address rather than a company account
- ✗Change request arrives just before a payroll processing cutoff date
- ✗Executive W-2 request comes from an email without an executive title or proper corporate signature
- ✗No multi-factor authorization process was followed before making the change
- ✗Employee claims urgency due to a personal emergency to bypass normal process
Known Malicious Domains
These domains have been associated with this attack. Never click links going to these addresses.
- hr-payroll-change.comMALICIOUS
- employee-direct-deposit.netMALICIOUS
- payroll-update-portal.comMALICIOUS
- w2-tax-form-request.netMALICIOUS
Glance automatically blocks emails from domains on this list. Domain list is not exhaustive — attackers register new domains continuously.
How Glance Stops This
- Domain similarity analysis catches lookalike sender addresses at millisecond speed
- SPF / DKIM / DMARC validation flags authentication failures before you ever see the email
- VirusTotal + Google Safe Browsing checks every link in real time
- Urgency language detection scores the email higher for manual review
- Known malicious domain blocklist updated continuously from live scan data
Don't wait to get hit.
Glance scans every incoming email against 12 detection layers — including the exact tactics described above — before it reaches your inbox.
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