Let’s go down memory lane back to 1981, it was the year when the first cybercrime officially took place in the history of mankind. The convict, namely Ian Murphy, whose alias is Captain Zap, hacked into an American telephone company – AT&T. The attack was simple, yet profound. Hack into the internal clock timers of the system, so that people can get late-night discount rates even on calls made in broad daylight. This resulted in people who called at midnight getting hefty fees in their bills. This is how cybercrime originated in this world. This was just a trailer of what’s to come in the 21st century.
Fast forward to 2022, when almost everything has transcended the web. Online payments, gaming, application submission there’s even online dating in today’s time. But with progress, there’s also an engender to the risk of information leak, and risk of money laundering in terms of online way. A person who is concerned about his privacy is very much at risk of getting exposed if his details get leaked or his money is stolen from him through a cybercrime.
The Growth of Cyber Crime
The rate of cybercrime has been on the rise exponentially and the one thing these hackers try to exploit from people is their hard-earned money. Every year there is an increase of 2.5-3% percent in cyber crimes with millions or even billions of dollars being transferred from one account to another illegally. Hackers are targeting money, later they will target cryptocurrency and a person will be having no defenses against such perfectly executed crimes.
Cyber Attacks on Organizations
Take for example the recent case of Rockstar games where they had kept the intricate details of their next match GTA VI under wraps but they had a data breach on 18th September 2022 when all their data got leaked by a hacker and the gamers were quick to pounce upon every piece of information that got leaked and cooked up theories.
Rockstar Games was working on this version since 2014, had lost it all within seconds, even after having the world’s best unit of cybersecurity against crimes the hacker found a way to breach their system and expose them, and allegedly this breach was carried out by a 17-year-old boy.
The cyber attack experienced by Rockstar games recently was done through attacking the Slack Channel of ROckstar games. A slack channel is a communication platform just like discord but Slack is specially used by game developers.
Even Governments Can’t Escape Them
There have been several such reports of cyber crimes by leading companies like Uber and cybercrimes are being not only done with companies but Governments are also being targeted. In August 2022 Finnish and Ukraine Government was a victim of Cybercrime. All these incidents put the common man’s hard-earned money and personal details in jeopardy, with seemingly no way possible to deal with these cyber thieves.
There is a myriad of cybersecurity attacks that can harm the system and exploit resources from the user, but the 4 main types of cyber attacks are
- DDoS Attacks
- Social Engineering (Phishing)
- Supply Chain Attacks
- Ransomware
Out of these, the most common cyber attack is DDoS, which can even be conducted by a school student, on a smaller scale.
The Basics of DDoS
DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service which is a kind of cyber-attack that hackers primarily use to make online services unavailable to users on the Internet. DDoS attacks are never from a single source they originate from multiple sources and are difficult to track down.
Earlier DDoS attacks were treated as minor attacks carried out by amateur attackers but now the DDoS attacks are extremely malicious and it’s difficult to mitigate them. DDoS attacks shut down the normal usage of a network service or how an Internet page runs.
If not have a thorough knowledge of cyber-attacks a person can be easily confused between DDoS and other cyber threats. Not a lot of people from the IT sector are aware of DDoS attacks and even tyro cybersecurity specialists have yet to come to terms with such kinds of attacks.
In DDoS, the hackers target the routers or switches and inundate the bandwidth making it useless. Large corporations from Google to Amazon all have been victims of DDoS attacks in 2020.
DDoS attacks can be prevented by using multi-layer protection which gives you multiple-layer protection against all kinds of DDoS attacks as today’s DDoS attacks target different layers. The best way to avoid DDoS attacks is early detection by constantly keeping a check on website traffic, and data packets and blocking malicious traffic or requests.
Hackers Love ‘Phishing’ Your Data
Phishing is a sub-type of Social Engineering cyber attack which is frequently used to purloin data which primarily consists of login credentials and credit card numbers wherein these stolen personal details can be used to exploit bank accounts and lead to financial or identity loss for an individual.
In a phishing attack, the cybercriminal can act as an authorized user as he possesses the credentials of the victim which can lead to embezzlement of money or identity loss. Sometimes these attacks are also generated through email when the hacker lures the victim to click on a malicious link which further leads to the installation of malware and then freezes the system and extracts all kinds of data from the system.
To protect against phishing we can use spam filters on emails where the spam email gets sent to the spam folder and we are at a lower risk of being tricked by the hacker, the browser settings must be altered to block malicious websites which are ready to steal our data but the most effective way of defending against phishing is Two-Factor Authentication which adds an extra layer of security on our encrypted data where both a password or username and a smartphone is required to gain access to the data. Another good way to escape from phishing is frequently changing passwords.
Need of Cyber Security is at its Peak
Cybersecurity laws have been put in place for stringent control over cyber fraudsters and to keep a check on them. Every company has an intent of keeping a cybersecurity team at their company so their precious details are not stolen and put in a pernicious situation.
A cyber security specialist deals with things like research, testing, evaluation, and deploy security technology and procedures. A threat and risk analysis is performed by the cybersecurity expert and risks are analyzed so that they can be eliminated. The development of a firewall is also an essential part played by the cybersecurity team so that no data breach happens. A new kind of antivirus is developed by the cybersecurity team to control the cyber breach. Along with developing technologies and new systems to keep cyber breaches out cyber security specialists also guarantee access to authorized users of data.
In a nutshell, from every individual to large corporations every one must get educated about cybercrimes and be meticulous about the details they share on online platforms or apps, and keep check of their systems so their money and data are protected from every aspect of cybercrime and the professional people must work together to minimize the cyber breach and enhance security even at grassroots levels so every citizen and government organization is assured that they are in safe hands.