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    23Nov, 2023
    India emerges top-5 victim of cyber attacks in H1 CY23

    Cyber threat landscape in India is becoming more dangerous as the country emerged as a top-five geography in the world when it comes to the highest number of detections and malware detections; and online banking malware detections in the first half of 2023.

    “India is among the top five countries globally for malware detections, accounting for 5.5 per cent 90,945 ransomware detections in the first half,” a mid-year cybersecurity report prepared by Trend Micro said.

    Similarly, India is ranked number 4 globally in online banking malware detections, contributing to a concerning 8.2 per cent of all global threats. “In the first half of 2023, a substantial 5,609 online malware threats were identified,” the report said.

    “India has also emerged as a top-3 geography for the highest detections of risk events in the first half of 2023, after the US and Brazil.

    Affected sectors

    The government sector faced 18,862 malware attacks, while the banking sector faced 15,514 malware attacks.

    “Manufacturing, Government, and banking industries were the hardest hit in the country, with malware families like COIMINER, MIMIKATZ, and POWLOAD posing significant risks,” the report said.

    “India is at a crossroads in cybersecurity. As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, our digital defenses are constantly being challenged. The rise of ransomware and malware attacks has had a significant impact on key sectors of our economy,” Vijendra Katiyar, Country Manager for India & SAARC at Trend Micro, said.

    “To stay ahead of the curve, organisations need to be proactive in anticipating threats and bolstering their defenses with a unified cybersecurity platform,” he said.

    Globally, over 85 billion threats were blocked in the first half of 2023, including 37 billion email threats and 46 billion malicious files.

    “Globally, the top 3 industries that detected the highest number of ransomware attacks are banking, retail, and transportation,” the report said.

    Resource : https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/india-emerges-top-5-victim-of-cyber-attacks-in-h1-cy23/article67412924.ece

    25Oct, 2023
    India targets Microsoft, Amazon tech support scammers in nationwide crackdown

    India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided 76 locations in a nationwide crackdown on cybercrime operations behind tech support scams and cryptocurrency fraud.

    The police operation, part of Operation Chakra-II, aims to dismantle cyber-enabled financial crime rings and is a collaborative effort involving international law enforcement agencies and tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon, working alongside the Indian federal enforcement agency.

    In raids spanning multiple Indian states, including Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Bihar, Delhi, and West Bengal, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) confiscated 32 mobile phones, 48 laptops and hard disks, and 33 SIM cards.

    Additionally, Indian authorities took action by freezing “numerous” bank accounts and seizing emails linked to 15 accounts, providing critical information on the alleged scam operations.

    Long-running tech support scams

    As a result of Operation Chakra-II, the CBI discovered two tech support scam operations running for at least five years, impersonating customer support agents working for “two well-known multi-national companies.”

    “The illegal call centers raided by CBI were set up to impersonate Microsoft and Amazon customer support. They targeted over 2,000 customers across Amazon and Microsoft primarily based in the U.S., but also in Canada, Germany, Australia, Spain, and the UK,” said Amy Hogan-Burney, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.

    “This operation was supported by a joint criminal referral made by Amazon and Microsoft through joint prosecution agreements in the U.S. and India, as the same cyber criminals were targeting both our customers,” Amazon added.

    The tech support scam rings used various international payment gateways and channels to facilitate the movement of funds illicitly acquired from foreign nationals, mainly from the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

    “These scammers would contact the victims via internet pop-up messages that falsely appeared to be security alerts from these MNCs (Complainants). The pop-up messages fraudulently claimed that the consumer’s computer was having various technical issues,” said the CBI.

    “A toll-free number would be given, where the victim would contact, and call would land up in their e-call centres (of accused). These companies would then take remote access of the victim’s computer & convince the victim of presence of non-existing problems and then allegedly make them pay hundreds of Dollars for unnecessary services.”

    According to the FBI’s 2022 Internet Crime Report, tech support scams ranked among the top five reported crime types from 2018 to 2022.

    In the past year alone, these scams led to losses exceeding $800 million for more than 32,000 victims across the United States.

    Cryptocurrency fraud operations also targeted

    Additionally, the CBI uncovered a cryptocurrency fraud ring associated with a fake crypto-mining operation that targeted Indian nationals, resulting in losses of at least Rs. 100 crore (1 Billion Indian Rupees), worth approximately $12 million.

    During the investigation, Indian authorities identified 150 accounts linked to this cryptocurrency crime ring, comprising accounts from 46 shell companies, 42 proprietorship firms, and 50 individual accounts, all used to collect illegally obtained funds.

    The CBI says the scammers developed a fake cryptocurrency token, luring investors with promises of significant profits from investments in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

    They allegedly created a website to mislead investors into believing their funds would be used to acquire mining machines, with the profits generated from the mined cryptocurrency to be distributed among investors.

    While, initially, the investors received returns to establish trust, the operation stopped running in August 2021 after collecting payments from unsuspecting Indian citizens who invested through various payment gateways.

    “Based on evidence gathered during Operation Chakra-II, law enforcement agencies internationally are being notified of details of identified victims, Shell companies, identified money mules, identified proceeds of crime, details of co-accused/ support elements for comprehensive action to dismantle these criminal networks,” the CBI said.

    “We are proud of our long-standing collaboration with law enforcement to combat Tech Support Fraud, which has resulted in 30-plus call center raids and 100-plus arrests to date,” Hogan-Burney said.

    “Through our continued commitment to protect consumers from impersonation scams, we initiated takedowns of more than 20,000 phishing websites and 10,000 phone numbers being used as part of impersonation schemes in 2022. We also have referred hundreds of bad actors across the globe to law enforcement authorities, which have resulted in arrests and raids on scam operations,” Amazon added.

    Resource : https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/india-targets-microsoft-amazon-tech-support-scammers-in-nationwide-crackdown/?&web_view=true

    17Mar, 2023
    Latitude cyberattack leads to data theft at two service providers

    Latitude Financial Services (Latitude) has disclosed a data breach after suffering a cyberattack, causing the company to shut down internal and customer-facing systems.

    Latitude is one of Australia’s largest personal loans provider and the country’s largest non-bank consumer credit lender.

    A subsidiary of Deutsche Bank and KKE, the firm provides a broad spectrum of consumer finance services, including unsecured personal loans, credit cards, car loans, personal insurance, and interest-free retail finance.

    Moreover, Latitude provides major Australian retailers like Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, David Jones, and The Good Guys with “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) schemes.

    One breach leads to another

    According to the ‘cyber incident’ notification, Latitude’s internal systems were breached, allowing a threat actor to steal an employee’s login. These credentials were then used for logging into two of the company’s service providers to steal customer data.

    “As of today, Latitude understands that approximately 103,000 identification documents, more than 97% of which are copies of drivers’ licenses, were stolen from the first service provider,” explains Latitude.

    “Approximately 225,000 customer records were also stolen from the second service provider.”

    Latitude has not clarified if the records from the second provider contain similar data as the first provider, i.e., ID and driver’s licenses or other information.

    BleepingComputer has requested a comment from the firm to clarify that, and we will update this story as soon as we receive a response.

    Exposed customers are not expected to take any action to protect themselves at this time. However, it is recommended that they stay vigilant, as their stolen data may be used in phishing or social engineering attacks.

    The company has shut down several internal and customer-facing systems while responding to the incident and says that the effort to contain the attack and prevent breaches or further customer data is still underway.

    While the public announcement was made available to all customers, those determined to be directly impacted by the security incident will receive personal notifications.

    Resource: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/latitude-cyberattack-leads-to-data-theft-at-two-service-providers/

    1Dec, 2022
    Google files lawsuit accusing ‘G Verifier’ scammers of impersonating company

    Google announced on Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit against a company allegedly impersonating it through telemarketing calls and manipulating reviews of Business Profiles on Google Search and Maps.

    A Google spokesperson shared dozens of reports sent to them from people who said they had been scammed by the company – which went by “G Verifier” – by attempting to charge people for creating Business Profiles, something Google provides for free. 

    “They also created websites advertising the purchase of fake reviews, both positive and negative, to manipulate reviews of Business Profiles on Google Search and Maps. This practice exploits entrepreneurs and small businesses — and it violates our policies on deceptive content,” Google lawyer Jon Vermandel and Technical Program Manager Ian Williams said in a blog post. 

    “Today’s legal action is one part of our ongoing commitment to protect people, fight fraud, and do our part to stop malicious actors. This is important because scams disproportionately target individuals, small businesses and those without the resources to protect themselves. It’s key to establishing legal precedent for a safer web.”

    The profiles are tools that allow owners to control how their business appears in Google Search and on Google Maps. 

    Vermandel and Williams noted that in 2021 Google stopped more than 12 million attempts from bad actors to create fake profiles and nearly eight million attempts from bad actors to claim profiles that didn’t belong to them.

    In many of the complaints Google shared from victims of the scam, people said they were called by someone from “G Verifier” and told that they had to pay $99 or their account would be suspended, making it impossible for their business to be found on Google. 

    When one victim pressed the caller about the service being free, the scammer allegedly said Google was changing the program and re-verifying companies to make sure they were still open during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    Others were told they would lose their five-star reviews if they did not pay and some said they did hand over account credentials that led to further issues. In some cases, the scammers also allegedly offered to flood a profile with positive reviews for payment. 

    In the lawsuit, Google said the G Verifier company was registered in Columbus, Ohio and run by someone named Kaushal Patel. Patel is accused of opening up other shell companies to run the scam.

    In addition to a range of scams, Google accused the companies of misusing the Google logo and other company signage to legitimize the fraudulent enterprises. 

    Patel and others are accused of running the scam through gverifiers.com and gverifierpro.com. During the scam calls, Google accused the perpetrators of telling victims they could also increase their ranking in Google search if provided with payment. 

    “These statements, which imply superior placement among organic search results, are false and deceitful. No service can guarantee that Google’s search engine, which uses a complex algorithm, will place a particular webpage on the first page of results, much less that it will be the very first result,” Google said. 

    “Since approximately December 2021, hundreds and hundreds of Business Profile merchants have contacted Google to complain about G Verifier’s harassing and deceptive scheme. Many of these merchants failed to realize that they had been scammed until after they had paid G Verifier.”

    The lawsuit accuses the scammers of copyright infringement, false advertising, telemarketing fraud and deceptive trade practices.

    Google noted that this is the third major lawsuit they have filed against scammers abusing their services after suing cybercriminals running fraudulent puppy mills earlier this year and hackers using the Glupteba botnet last year. 

    Resource : https://therecord.media/google-files-lawsuit-accusing-g-verifier-scammers-of-impersonating-company/?web_view=true