Cyber Attacks From Cyber Criminals
The recent development and innovations due to the effect of emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things IoT, Cloud Technology, and Smart Phones has opened new vulnerabilities for cybercriminals to exploit.
A total number of 281 global arrests of cybercriminals was recorded in 2019. Out of the 281 persons that was arrested, 167 of them are Nigerians.
Other persons arrested came from various countries including United States, United Kingdom, Kenya, Ghana, France, Italy, Japan, Turkey and Malaysia. Almost 3.7 million USD was recovered and up to 118 million USD was recorded in fraudulent wire transfers.
According to the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, in October 2019, the organisation recorded a total number of 180 million active telephone subscribers in Nigeria. While the total number of active internet subscribers is over 123.5 million.
While this is a good development towards digitization. It also opens more device and individuals to cyber attack in the country. This means that each year, the rate of cybercrimes will increase which calls for the attention of the government and concerned organisations.
From the latest findings by Strategy Analytics, about 38.6 billion devices will be connected by 2025, and 50 billion by 2030. This projections will change the scale and pattern of cyber attacks. While some countries will be battling with the new cyber threat, Nigeria will be struggling with both the old and new styles of cyber attacks.
Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria, CSEAN cautioned Nigerians and different organisations and government agencies to apply safety measures on cyber attacks.
The organisation has warned that more attacks will be recorded in the future which might be targeted at individuals, Internet Service Providers, ISPs, Government Ministries, Department and Agencies, MDAs, Telecommunication companies and banks.
According to the organisation, possible attacks that will be recorded includes; Business Email Attacks, BEC, Social Engineering attacks like Phishing Campaign, Ransomware, Supply chain attacks, Insider threats, and attack on free public Wi-fi.
Various types of scam according to the group will originate from Nigeria and they include: wire fraud, identity theft, romance scams, fraudulent-check scams, gold-buying scams, advance-fee scams, and credit card scams.
The top cybersecurity threats to look out for in 2020 is the Phishing Campaigns, BEC and the Business Email attacks. According to the recent Anti Phishing Working Group (APWG) report, Nigeria recorded a high rate of phishing attacks in the third quarter of 2019 compared to the rate seen since last three years.
Moreso, more ransomware attacks will be recorded in 2020, since Nigeria has no regulations mandating the disclosure of cyber attack in Nigeria. Lack of no records has made it difficult to identify the ways and measures to be used in preventing these attacks.
Diutocoinnews reported in October 2019, howthe city of Johannesburg in South Africa suffered a ransomware attack. The hackers demanded a ransom of four Bitcoins, which equals to about R500,000 or $37,000.
During the same period, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were launched against several large South African banks. The hackers equally demanded bitcoin ransom from it’s victims.
The government should be prepared to fight against the in coming cyber attacks that will be recorded in 2019, mostly targeted at the banks and other financial service providers in the country.
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