Most of us can?t imagine life today without the benefit and use of the internet. We go online to send and receive emails, seek information on a diverse range of topics for our personal and professional use, enjoy the convenience of online banking, connect with friends and relatives, and so on and so on. Most of us would have then also received an email from a member of a Nigerian family with wealth. It is a desperate cry for help in getting a very large sum of money out of the country. All you are asked to do is cover the endless ?legal? and other ?fees? that must be paid to the people to get the money released.
This scam, like most scams, is too good to be true. Yet people still fall for this money transfer con game. A couple of months ago, cyber sleuths of the Delhi Police arrested a 34-year-old Nigerian national in Pune for allegedly duping a woman from Delhi of R15 lakh. The woman was led to believe that she had won Rs 5 crore in a lottery and was asked to pay the said amount as processing fee and other charges.
In a related incident, Odisha Police arrested five foreigners, including four Nigerians and an Ugandan woman from New Delhi, for swindling over R5 lakh through fake lottery from an unsuspecting shopkeeper in Bargarh, Odisha. The scammers employed the same modus operandi: the local had received a message on his cellphone, where the sender had confirmed he was the lucky winner of a lottery of R1 crore and requested him to deposit R21,500 as processing fee to get the prize money.
Down south, an internet-based fraud racked was busted last week when police arrested three persons from Tamil Nadu who duped a business man of R1.18 crore after promising him to give $3.5 million. Victims of the dark side of the internet are numerous. Many cyber criminals have been caught and prosecuted, but many remain out there lurking and waiting to exploit. What is even more disturbing is that augmented by broadband penetration, smaller and emerging cities of India are exploring opportunities offered by the virtual world, in turn creating a new lucrative pool of targets for cyber criminals to exploit.
Cities such as Bhubaneshwar, Surat, Kochi, Jaipur, Visakhapatnam and Indore have a high proportion of small and medium businesses and industry clusters. IT security firm Symantec has observed a sizeable 25% of bot-infected computers in these cities, indicating that these locations are being inducted as part of a network of compromised computers. Additionally, some cities that repeatedly appear in the list for origin of phishing in India?Ahmedabad, Nashik and Coimbatore also figure in the list of bot-infections.
Cyber crime refers to illegal activities that take place online, including fraud, spam, identity theft, computer viruses and worms, cyber stalking and the like. Most people become victims of these at one time or another. ?Sophistication and persistence of the cyber crimes today has magnified significantly,? says Amit Nath, country manager, India & SAARC, Trend Micro.
Rana Gupta, head of business at Safenet Inc, India, estimates that over 42 million people in India have fallen victim to cybercrime in recent years. The small town India is gaining prominence on the cyber threat map with 81% increase in malicious attacks and 93% rise in mobile vulnerabilities. ?Hackers have expanded their area of operations to tier-II cities and to smaller companies. In fact, Hyderabad ranks among the top three locations for bot-infected computers in the country. Hackers spread malware in the Web and when people click the malicious links, they stealthily deploy software applications,? he adds.
A considerable amount of fraud is happening via banking malware, that is, the automatic transfer systems. Amith Nath says, ?Phishing sites, which are designed to look like the official webpages of major banks and building societies, send out millions of emails to random addresses. They give the impression they are official communications and invite unsuspecting people to connect to their website and type in their account details and passwords. These are then used by the fraudsters to drain money from their victims? accounts.?
Mobile malware is also on the rise, as smartphones, especially Android-based devices, are so popular in the Asia Pacific region. ?The reason why criminals are focusing their attacks on stealing personal data is simple. It?s the sheer volume of small business owners working from multiple devices that leaves them vulnerable to attacks,? says Nath of Trend Micro. Small and medium businesses are now more vulnerable than before to cyber attacks, since they have become part of a larger ecosystem.
Criminals have exploited weaknesses in technology, legislation and lack of public awareness that is created by the global reach of the internet and its rapid expansion, to develop new crimes, and to facilitate traditional crimes in a new way. New crimes include attacks on computer systems utilising malicious software, computer viruses and denial of service attacks.
The internet is not a place without crime, but it is also not a place where you are helpless. While there is no silver bullet or single solution that will prevent all attacks, some common sense rules and proper safeguards can definitely keep the Web predators and criminals at bay. The need to remain vigilant and alert has never been greater!