Cybercrime

“Cybercrime, also called computer crime, the use of a computer as an instrument to further illegal ends, such as committing fraud, trafficking in child pornography and intellectual property, stealing identities, or violating privacy. Cybercrime, especially through the Internet, has grown in importance as the computer has become central to commerce, entertainment, and government.” definition: Encylopedia Britannica

I have found that over the last 3 years, we have seen an explosion of the amount and severity of Cybercrime. The criminals, now include phone calls, email and SMS messages, in addition to the usual direct Internet attacks, to achieve their goals. The criminals now have ready access to systems such as ChatGPT (large language model-based chatbot), to make their emails, voice messages, SMS messages indistinguishable from the real thing.

Even though I work in IT and am aware of the methods of attack, I still find that at times, I almost fall prey to their schemes.

Unfortunately, Cybercrime is also a very good reason why Digital IDs are such a bad idea. I often see victims of identify theft, usually from a database theft from an large organisation, struggling to get their life back together. More often than not, it is the elderly that are most susceptible to attack.

How does this happen?

  1. Trick a person working for a large institution (a bank, a telecommunications company, a government department, etc.) into clicking on a link in their browser.
  2. Use the link to trigger an upload of malware
  3. Use the malware to download all the data from the institution’s database.
  4. Decrypt the passwords in the database.
  5. Sell the information on the Internet, either on the Dark Web or even on the normal Web.

So now that the criminals that have stolen the database have made their money, the stolen personal records contained with those databases are then used by other criminals to extort, impersonate or otherwise steal the money from everybody within that list. Trust me, there is no law, or government action, that will ever stop this.

But the passwords are encrypted, isn’t that what security is for? Check out this video and decide. I have a computer sitting on my desktop with the capability of what this person is demonstrating on the video and I only work as an employee in an IT company!

Password Cracking – Computerphile – YouTube

In summary:

  • Only ever create passwords which do not contain English words and are as long as possible (I recommend that they are always over 12 characters) – this is in your control. Be aware that in 2023 the most frequently used password was found to be “123456”, compared to 2021. Keep this in mind when looking at the rest of this summary.
  • Clicking on a link in your browser, or email client, could potentially result in a company data breach if you do it on their computers, or just theft of your credentials or even your identity, if you are at home.
  • It only takes a single employee to make a mistake, to breach a secure company or institution. (Check out this recent story.)
  • Digital Identification systems like the Australian government is introducing, and banks all over the world are promoting, will only increase the risk of this type of crime. Remember the weakest link to any security system is the human using the computer!

I have already put a written submission in to my government regarding their Digital ID scheme, however, this really needs to be a united effort and everybody needs to push back hard on this, worldwide!