Cybercrime

According to cloud-enabled security solutions provider Barracuda Network, such tactics could help attackers to stay under the radar and avoid alerting potential victims, security teams and payment systems. Researchers analysed 3,00,000 emails detected as blackmailing scams.

According to cybersecurity company Sophos, the smish campaign consists of a text with a link addressed to customers of the most popular Indian banks. It sends a text falsely claiming that the recipient's bank account will be blocked, and telling the recipient to update their PAN and AADHAR card information on their accounts.

According to the State of Security 2023 report by software firm Splunk, about 62 per cent of respondents said that their business-critical applications have suffered from unplanned downtime due to a cybersecurity incident on at least a monthly basis, an increase from 54 per cent in 2022.

According to Cisco's Cybersecurity Readiness Index, India scored high in the global chart in terms of maturity, performing above the global average of 15 per cent on cybersecurity readiness. "The Index has been built with a focus on five core pillars of identity, devices, network, applications, and data, and examines organisational postures in securing these," said Vish Iyer, Vice President, Architectures, Cisco APJC.

While the overall volume of attacks using these tactics is currently low (each tactic accounts for less than 1 per cent of attempted phishing attacks), they are widespread, affecting between 11 per cent and 15 per cent of organisations, often with multiple attacks, according to IT security firm Barracuda Networks.

Businesses, regardless of their size and industry, are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Hackers are getting more sophisticated, and exploiting vulnerabilities in the systems to their advantage. The threat landscape is constantly evolving, and organisations must update their cyber security strategies to better protect their data.

According to CNN, the FBI has been investigating and working to contain a cyber incident on part of its computer network in recent days. "The FBI is aware of the incident and is working to gain additional information. This is an isolated incident that has been contained," the US agency said in a statement.As this is an ongoing investigation.

On January 10, the nation's third-largest wireless carrier disclosed that personal data of 180,000 customers, including their names, birth dates and phone numbers, had been breached. The company said on its website it found personal data of about 110,000 more customers, who had terminated their subscriptions, was also compromised, reports yonhap news agency.

The telecom company said in a US SEC filing that the "bad actor" started stealing the data, which includes "name, billing address, email, phone number, date of birth, T-Mobile account number and information such as the number of lines on the account and plan features," since November 25, 2022.

It's the second time the company was hacked in the past nine months."Based on our investigation to date, this targeted incident has been limited to 133 Mailchimp accounts. There is no evidence that this compromise affected Intuit systems or customer data beyond these Mailchimp accounts," the company said in a statement.