As we move further into 2022, it's important to be aware of the dangers that come with being online. there were almost 500,000 fraud scams and over 300,000 cases of identity theft reported in the first four months of this year alone! That's a lot of people who lost money or had their identities stolen. The UN estimates that by the end of 2022, there will be nearly 5 billion internet users - so you can imagine how much worse things could get. In this blog post, we'll discuss some tips on how to protect yourself from cybercrime in this increasingly dangerous world.
What is Cybercrime?
Cybercrime is any crime that takes place online. This can include anything from identity theft and fraud, to hacking and cyberstalking. With so many people now working from home, there are more opportunities for criminals to target individuals or businesses.
Have you ever noticed that your entire music collection which you cherished for the past decade got encrypted by ransomware, immediately you click on a link in a spam mail or when you try activating macros in a malicious document? Have you also been told to pay a sum of $500 or more to get the decryption code? If yes, you are also among the 200,000 victims across 150 countries. Businesses, organizations and individuals are still trying to handle this rising terrifying virus, this has left millions of people worried if they are at risk of this ransomware. However, many still have questions such as what is ransomware? What effects does it have? How can one get this ransomware? And many more. Questions such as these will be answered here and solutions to curb this will also be offered.
If you were not living under a rock for past sometime, you must have heard about the leaked NSA tools and the vulnerabilities getting exploited into the wild by WannaCry Ransomeware. This would be one of the most disastrous cyber-attack, once infected the ransomware encrypts user-files and asks for payment in Bitcoin to release decryption keys needed to unlock the files. As of today 298,455 machines are traced to be infected by this malware in over 150+ countries world-over. The first-line of defence to make sure your computer is not infected is to install latest Microsoft Updates and follow the advisory provided here, if you are late and infected WanaKiwi may be of help.
More and more cases on spying using electronic devices are coming into light, few days ago it was reported that NSA of USA is doing targeted spying by intercepting and bugging electronic devices with backdoors to users in their surveillance list. Many countries including USA and India have already banned Chinese technology in sensitive departments after fearing hidden backdoors which can be used for spying, we have also shared the news of Spyware Electric Kettles and Hidden Backdoor in Routers earlier on this blog.
This time the experts at the German security vendor GDATA have discovered dangerous computer malware in firmware of an Android device, the "N9500" model of Android smartphone which is produced by the Chinese manufacturer Star comes per-loaded with Spyware straight from the factory disguised as Google Play Store app giving it full access on the device.
It is also not possible to remove the manipulated app and the spyware as they are integrated deep into the firmware preventing removal. Large online retailers are still selling the Android device at prices ranging from 130 to 165 euros and distributing it across Europe.
We all are now very well aware of the fact that almost all big government's use cyber-warfare to spy on each other and individuals of interest, NSA, USA's cyber-weapon Flame, suspected Chinese spying using Electric Kettles and other communication devices are prime public examples of this.
The latest revelations made by "The Washington Post's" story "FBI’s search for ‘Mo,’ suspect in bomb threats, highlights use of malware for surveillance" provides further glimpses onto how intrusive these tactics can get. The FBI's ability to covertly activate a users computer camera without triggering the notification light which informs the user that it is being recorded is one such example, While used for good purpose of catching criminals and controlling terrorism now what happens when the technology gets leaked or gets abused by whom which have access to it now to settle personal scores or invade one's privacy?
News reports from Russia's state-owned channel Rossiya 24 showed footage of a technician opening up an iron included in a batch of Chinese imports to find a "spy chip" with "a little microphone" embedded into it. These hidden, embedded electronic chips are scanning and connecting to any computer within a 200m radius with unprotected Wi-Fi networks, once connected these "Trojan devices" were being used to spread viruses.
While the report says that the malware is being used to send SPAM, piggy-banking on infected computer's internet connection and resources without the owner's knowledge about it, our recent story "Hidden Backdoor In Your Internet Router - With Love, From China !!" and the fact that the rogue devices had "an microphone" further establishes the fact that these are or can be used for spying. The researchers also found other products having these rogue components including mobile phones, car dashboard cameras and electric kettles.
Chinese telecom companies have been accused of embedding spying technologies into enterprise level telecom hardware for Chinese government, now a new research done by embedded device hacker "Craig Heffner" unearthed that consumer level internet router's made by Chinese companies come bundled with a secret backdoor which allows full root level access to the consumer router.
He unveiled secret backdoors embedded inside a number of D-Link and Tenda brand routers which are manufactured in China and are sold all around the globe. The beauty of this type of backdoor is that these are undetectable by antivirus software's and bypass almost all sorts of security measures as the loophole is sitting at the very start of network access chain supplying and controlling access to everything else after it - this is sort of your gatekeeper being the enemy Trojan. Unlike NSA PRISM spying this would also be a more easy, distributed, cost-efficient and targeted form of government spying.
There is no doubt that cyber spying is the most preferred new age intelligence gathering tactic used by almost all countries, but countries like USA and China have already been exposed for using technology as a weapon.
The conclusive proof's fingering all leads to an Isarel, American joint-venture targeting Iranian nuclear facilities using the world's most advanced computer malware Stuxnet are now well known publicly. To make things even more interesting researchers at Kaspersky Labs have now unveiled another extraordinary peace of cyber-weapon, named "Flame" the data-mining malware has already caused substantial damage and massive amounts of data loss as admitted by Iranian officials. Iranian authorities are also claiming that the virus damaged centrifuges operating at its uranium enrichment facility at Nantaz and gathered data of its oil fields by breaching into computers of high-ranking officials.
Due to the complex and very sophisticated technology (20 MB in total) used by this malware it has been labelled "the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed". The ‘Flame’ cyber espionage worm is highly modular in nature and is specifically targeted at middle-east countries, the sophisticated attack toolkit with similarities to Stuxnet and Duqu malware's is basically a combination of computer backdoor, Trojan, and a worm. The success of this weapon can be gauged from the fact that it is believed to be spying since past 5 years undetected. The sophistication can be measured by the fact that "Flame" has 80 known Command-N-Control servers dedicated to itself and the modular nature of the malware allows its controllers to load/unload code of there choice anytime.
Recently Torrent sites are getting spammed by malicious torrent uploads disguised as new movie releases, torrent users are reporting that they have downloaded various videos mostly claiming to be new movie releases or TV shows only to be confronted with a short video which advises them to download a new media player called 3wPlayer to view the rest of file. The few second clip show the Url to download this malware media player 3wPlayer.
The player installs a form of CIDHELP malware which is very hard to get rid of, The only solution to this problem is to make the user aware of this kind of tactic and reporting any such torrent to the torrent website for removal.
Chinese telecom companies have been accused of embedding spying technologies into enterprise level telecom hardware for Chinese government, now a new research done by embedded device hacker "Craig Heffner" unearthed that consumer level internet router's made by Chinese companies come bundled with a secret backdoor which allows full root level access to the consumer router.
There is no doubt that cyber spying is the most preferred new age intelligence gathering tactic used by almost all countries, but countries like USA and China have already been exposed for using technology as a weapon. 
