Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
{ THE CHANGING FACE OF CYBER CRIME}
Ransomware, malicious domains, data-harvesting malware, the Dark Web, botnets, cryptojacking… It might sound like a sci-fi movie but these crimes are real, know no borders, are virtual, and they cause significant damage. This is the world of cybercrime.
CYBERCRIME IN THE TIME OF CORONA
‘Cybercriminals don’t operate in the physical world and they certainly did not stop their activities during the pandemic,’ says Amy Hogan-Burney, the general manager of the digital crimes unit at Microsoft. ‘The security barrier changed. Having a dispersed workforce and a large number of people no longer in a central location meant a lot more things to secure.’
Cybercriminals are skilled, relentless and constantly looking for ways to adapt their techniques and increase their success rate. While the coronavirus pandemic didn’t necessarily change how cybercriminals operate, it did cause them to use different lures to execute their attacks.
‘At the very beginning of the pandemic, what we really saw is criminals taking and leveraging fear associated with COVID-19 for great success,’ says Hogan-Burney. ‘We would see phishing domains and other things used by cybercriminals to say things such as, “Please look at this schedule that we have for working from home.” Things that people believe they might see in their inbox to socially engineer them to get into that secure barrier.’
Like any business, cybercriminals look for gaps that they can turn into opportunities. They also don’t operate in the physical world so just like anyone else, they’re sitting at home, behind a computer and trying to make money. So if there is a geopolitical issue, such as the pandemic, then cybercriminals will use that to target individuals and specifically people working from home. ‘Anything that you received in your email inbox that had to do with [the pandemic] is something you should not be clicking on, for any reason, at any time,’ adds Hogan-Burney. ‘Anything that capitalises on the fear of individuals’ freedoms.’
THE DARK WEB MARKETPLACE
‘Going back five years, cybercrime was fairly high-end work. They had to create tool sets and infrastructure – it was like a new startup business,’ says Craig Jones, the cybercrime director at Interpol. Interpol is a neutral organisation that works across 194 countries. It has its own constitution to which ever member country must agree, similar to the United Nations. ‘What we’ve seen now and what we’re continuing to see is a sort of “cybercrime as a service” model evolving on the Dark Web marketplaces.’
Think of it like an online shop or marketplace. You pop online and pick out what you want and pay a service fee. On the Dark Web, you can buy personal data as well as items such as guns and drugs.
The services offered by these hackers for hire include everything from social media to email hacking, destroying a company’s reputation, step-by-step training videos and even Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which prevent anyone from accessing a website, overloading the system so it crashes.
Jones is now leading something called the Interpol Global Financial Crimes Task Force, which focuses on coronavirus-related scams, vaccine misinformation and government relief funds.
‘The government is setting the funds but they have had to be set up really, really quickly. Sometimes security is not carefully considered,’ says Jones. ‘At the beginning, when people were trying to buy masks and gloves and other personal protective equipment, merchant scams mushroomed overnight as there was an urgent need for that sort of equipment.’
Microsoft has been working collaboratively with the World Economic Forum, as well as other partners such as Interpol, to fight cybercrime on a global level. ‘These criminals are very fast and very technologically savvy. They don’t care where we’re located, and they don’t care about geographic borders. They don’t care about where their victims are or where their infrastructure sits,’ says Hogan-Burney. ‘To a certain extent, we have to do the same thing as them – it mustn’t matter that I’m sitting in the United States and the actor is in Nigeria and the victims are around the world… We have to work together.’