Cyber crime warning as hackers resort to sophisticated e-con tricks

Thursday 06 March 2014

Businesses are being warned to be vigilant after an increase in the amount of spam and phishing emails making it through filters put in place to protect computer systems.

Cyber crime is becoming increasingly sophisticated as phishing emails appear genuine, tricking the user into clicking on a link to a website that then infects their computer, often harvesting confidential or potential information. Others link to “spoof” websites designed to lead the user into providing personal information such as usernames and passwords, or bank account details.

Next Generation IT director Jason Connolly is urging companies to educate their employees about the risks and to regularly update their systems. He said that the emails often look very genuine, particularly if people don’t look at them closely.

“They may appear to come from a bank or financial institution, a company you do business with or an email provider or social networking site or they look like they have come from someone within your email address book. They often include logos to make them more realistic or have a link to another website,” he said. “The main warning signs are if they are ask you to make a phone call for verification purposes, to click through to another site, if they are offering you something that you are unaware of such as lottery money and if they give you a deadline to respond before something happens such as your account being closed.”

He added that there had been an increasing use of typo-squatting or cybersquatting where criminals would slightly alter a genuine website address by adding, omitting, or transposing letters so that at first glance, it looks genuine.

“We have also seen masked web addresses being used regularly where a link is given which appears genuine as it contains all or part of a real company’s name but actually takes you to an illegitimate site. One of the quickest ways to check whether a link is genuine is rest the mouse pointer on the link which will then bring up an additional box showing the real web address so you can establish whether it is genuine or a fake,” he said.