cybercriminals
Sending These WhatsApp Messages Can Land You Jail Time in SA
South Africa’s Cybercrimes Bill has finally been signed to law by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Now an act of parliament, the bill seeks to bring the country’s cybersecurity laws in line with the rest of the world. One of the features of the new bill is the creation of offences and the criminalisation of, amongst others, the disclosure of data messages which are harmful. What this means is that if you send someone a WhatsApp message containing illegal material or with violent intentions, you can now be prosecuted for it. Examples of data messages now criminalised include: Messages which incite violence or damage to property. Messages which threaten persons with violence or damage to property. Messages which contain an intimate image sent without the subject’s consent. However, this isn’t just...
How Hackers are Taking Advantage of the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout
Image sourced from TimesLIVE Cybercriminals are well known for taking advantage of any opportunity. The largest vaccine rollout in history is no exception, with hackers now finding ways to target the supply chain. Understanding why the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain being targeted and how to protect against such attacks is vital for IT leaders who understand that healthcare and cybersecurity must now go hand in hand. Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain on healthcare cybersecurity The healthcare sector underwent several significant shifts during the pandemic. These shifts included a move toward offering telehealth services on a large scale, setting up remote, temporary COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites, and large-scale development, manufacturing, and distr...
5 House Objects Cybercriminals could Use to Spy on You
It is estimated that there are more 22 billion devices linked to a home internet connection around the world, and research suggests this figure could reach 38.6 billion by 2025. While hyper-connectivity offers countless benefits, it also increases the number of available attack points to hackers and invisible intruders. Check Point research warns that there are five household objects that are being targeted by cybercriminals to spy on individuals in their own home. “Mobile phones, Smart TVs, computers and toys are just some of the devices being targeted. The number of products that feature a camera or microphone is growing every day, which can become an issue if they are connected to the internet and do not have the necessary security measures in place,” says Eusebio Nieva, Technical Direc...
Internet of threats – cybersecurity measures in the IoT landscape
Internet of Things (IoT) refers to any object or device that is connected to the Internet. This rapidly expanding set of “things” – which capture, send and receive data – includes cars, appliances, smartwatches, lighting, home assistants, home security, and more. It’s predicted that by 2025, there will be 41.6 billion units of IoT connected devices worldwide. Internet-connected devices can make us more efficient, save time and money, and allow us connectivity from almost anywhere, but they also require that we share more information than ever. The security of this information, and the security of these devices, is not always guaranteed. Once a device connects to the Internet, it could be connecting to all sorts of risks. As the number of connected devices increases, especially as more peop...
NITDA warns Nigerians on fake news
Commonwealth of Nations In line with its efforts at enlightening Nigerians on the nefarious actions of cybercriminals exploiting the COVID-19 Pandemic to mislead and defraud unsuspecting victims, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has warned the general public on the recent fake news in circulation. A statement by the Head, Corporate Affairs & External Relations Corporate at NITDA, Mrs Hadiza Umar, said that the fake news tagged “Argentina Is Doing It”, being circulated over social media, particularly on WhatsApp, is aimed at causing panic and inducing terror in individuals. According to the statement, the message warns the recipient not to open a video file called ”Argentina Is Doing It” as it will hack their phone in 10 seconds. In order to lend credibili...
South African Organisations Lag Behind Global Average of Cybersecurity Resilience
Email and data security company, Mimecast, unveiled its fourth-annual State of Email Security 2020 report. This report summarises details from 1,025 global IT decision-makers on the current state of cybersecurity. The findings in this year’s report demonstrate that despite high levels of confidence in respondents’ cyber resilience strategies, there is a clear need for improvement. While a large majority (77%) of respondents say they have or are actively rolling out a cyber resilience strategy, only 62% of South African organisations are doing the same. Yet an astounding 47% of local organisations – and 60% of global ones – believe it is inevitable or likely they will suffer from an email-borne attack in the coming year. South African respondents cite data loss (35%), a decrease in employee...
Web Skimming – A New Way to Steal Payments from Online Shoppers
Sourced from IOL. Researchers from cybersecurity and antivirus experts, Kaspersky, have uncovered a new technique for stealing users’ payment information on online shopping websites – a type of attack known as web skimming. Web skimming is a popular practice used by attackers to steal users’ credit card details from the payment pages of online stores, whereby attackers inject pieces of code into the source code of the website. This malicious code then collects the data inputted by visitors to the site (i.e. payment account logins or credit card numbers) and sends the harvested data to the address specified by attackers. Often, to conceal the fact that the webpage has been compromised, attackers register domains with names that resemble popular web analytics services, such as Google Analyti...
Use of Cloud Collaboration Tools Surge Across the World and So Do Attacks
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed companies to adapt to new government-mandated restrictions on workforce movement around the world. The immediate response has been a rapid adoption and integration of cloud services, particularly cloud-based tools such as Microsoft Office 365, Slack and other video conferencing platforms like Zoom. A new report by security firm McAfee shows that hackers are responding to this mass migration to these platforms with an increased focus on abusing cloud account credentials. After analyzing cloud usage data that was collected between January and April, from over 30-million enterprise users of its MVISION cloud security monitoring platform, the company estimates a 50% growth in adoption of cloud services across all industries. Some industries, however, saw a much...
7 Techniques Cybercriminals Could Use to Steal Your Private Data
Cyber threats do not rest and they continue to evolve as bad actors develop new attack techniques. Good cybersecurity hygiene requires more than a strong password to avoid compromise. The most important thing is to know how exactly cybercriminals may attempt to gain access to your data. Here are seven techniques they might try: Password Spraying: A form of brute force attack that targets multiple accounts in which adversaries try multiple guesses of the password on a single account that often leads to account lockout. With password spraying, the adversary only tries a few of the most common passwords against multiple user accounts, trying to identify that one person who is using a default or easy-to-guess password and thus avoiding the account lockout scenario. Key logging attack: By insta...
5 Ways to Protect Your Business from Mobile Adware
One of the most common forms of cyberthreats designed to collect personal information from a user’s device is mobile adware. This is because roughly 4 billion people are connected to the Internet via their smartphone. Despite the adoption of mobile devices, companies rarely prioritize mobile security. Check Point’s Cyber Security Report 2020 shows that in 2019, 27% of companies suffered a cyber-attack because the security of a mobile device was breached. “It only takes one compromised mobile device for cybercriminals to steal confidential information and access an organization’s corporate network,” explains Pankaj Bhula, Regional Director for Africa at Check Point. The main problem with adware is pinpointing how a phone became infected. Adware is developed to sneak onto a device undetected...
