Financial Phishing

According to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, the financial threat landscape has seen significant changes in 2022

About 30 crore people are vulnerable to phishing attacks in India, out of which 5 lakh potentially fall prey to scamsters, a top official of cloud communications firm Tanla Platforms said here. The Hyderabad-based company unveiled an anti-phishing platform during Mobile World Congress 2023 here to prevent phishing messages from reaching subscribers and is currently running trials on Vodafone Idea network. Speaking to PTI, Tanla Platforms Founder, Chairman and CEO D Uday Reddy said while the solution has been developed in India, the problem is global and Tanla has seen interest from other parts of the world. "As per our estimates, there are around 30 crore people in India who are vulnerable to phishing attacks out of which 5 lakh people potentially get scammed. We have noticed that only 7 per cent who get scammed report about the crime due to various reasons. Anti-phishing platform will detect the scam within a minute it is introduced in India," Reddy said. The platform was launched

About 44% of the fake numbers are from outside India; 80% of those from India were found to be valid and still operational

These types of cyber attacks are called phishing/smishing attacks, and not only the SBI, but every other banking, financial and other application customers can fall prey to it

The ICC has allegedly lost close to USD 2.5 million after becoming a victim of cyber crime, according to a report. The incident of phishing, which originated in the USA, took place last year, ESPNCricinfo reported. "The route used by fraudsters to commit the financial scam was Business E-mail Compromise (BEC), also known as e-mail account compromise, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) describes as 'one of the most financially damaging online crimes'," the report stated. An investigation is underway as the ICC, which is not commenting on the matter, reported the incident to law enforcement agency in the US. How the scam took place is not yet known. "It is not yet known what route exactly the fraudsters took to get the money transferred from the ICC account - whether they had got in touch directly with someone at the head office in Dubai, or had targeted an ICC vendor or consultant. "It is also not confirmed whether the transaction was done in one single payment or the

Mid-market firms with revenues of $10 million to $1 billion faced 45% of attacks; only 21% were large ones with over $1 billion in revenue; smaller firms suffered 34% of attacks

Social media giant Meta has taken down over 40 accounts operated by an Indian firm CyberRoot Risk Advisory, allegedly involved in hacking-for-hire services, the online giant said in a report. Meta also took down a network of about 900 fake accounts on Instagram and Facebook operated from China by an unknown entity. These accounts were focused on collecting data of people in Myanmar, India, Taiwan, the US and China, including military personnel, pro-democracy activists, government employees, politicians and journalists, according to the company's Threat Report on the Surveillance-for-Hire Industry released on December 15. "We removed a network of more than 40 accounts on Facebook and Instagram operated by an Indian firm called CyberRoot Risk Advisory Private. Rather than directly sharing malware on our apps, this group's activity manifested primarily in social engineering and phishing, often intended to trick people into giving up their credentials to various online accounts across t

What is a phishing attack?

The number of cyber-attacks have jumped manifold across the globe. Phishing is one of the common forms of cyber threat. Let's take a peek into the dark world of phishing and the ways to prevent it

According to cybersecurity firm Check Point, the report highlighted the brands that hackers most often imitated in the first three months of this year

Meta (formerly Facebook) has filed a federal lawsuit in California court in the US to disrupt phishing attacks designed to deceive people into sharing their login credentials

The CM said that he had received several complaints from job-seeking youth, about fake call letters and offer letters guaranteeing government jobs, both in the central as well as as state govt

In the third quarter, Microsoft stayed as leader of most imitated brands at 29 per cent of all phishing attacks globally, albeit at a slower rate, down from 45 per cent in the second quarter of 2021

The malicious activity is being carried out using the ngrok platform, a unique web application, it said.

The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted spear-phishing assault on US and foreign government agencies and think tanks this week using an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development, Microsoft said. The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said in a blog post late Thursday. It did not say what portion of the attempts may have led to successful intrusions. The cybersecurity firm Volexity, which also tracked the campaign but has less visibility into email systems than Microsoft, said in a post that relatively low detection rates of the phishing emails suggest the attacker was likely having some success in breaching targets. Burt said the campaign appeared to be a continuation of multiple efforts by the Russian hackers to .

CERT-In has asked users to encrypt and protect their sensitive documents to avoid potential leakage

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan issued notice to the Ministry of Communication, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and major mobile service providers

It has further contended that under the statutory regime it is the telecom companies responsibility to prevent such fraud and deter the fraudsters through blocking and/or financial disincentives

The put-call ratio has climbed to an elevated level of 1.9, which is a negative sign, say experts

In view of the growing frequency of such attacks, individuals need to adopt stringent measures