Cyber Peace Foundation, in their recent finding, found that Chinese hacker groups based out of Guangdong and Henan province in China targeted millions of online shoppers during the recent Big Billon day shopping festival season.
According to a report by IANS, scammers managed to create a fake ‘Amazon Big Billion Day Sale’ page a few days after the Flipkart Big Billion Day sale. Many Indians were sent spam links of the page created by the scammers asking them to participate in the contest.
On the page of the fake sale, a ‘spin the lucky wheel’ was created which claimed by clicking it winners could win an OPPO F17 Pro smartphone. People who clicked the link and won the phone were asked to share the link further via WhatsApp.
These links were found out to be registered in China under an organisation named ‘Fang Xiao Qing’. Hackers managed to set up fake profiles using fake images and comments on the contest page. Comments helped the contest look more legit and decisive for normal people who clicked the link.
Hackers collect information from users through these contest pages and use it for initiating more such fake links. They often target people in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities of India as users located in these areas often fall prey easily. This situation urges the need to increase awareness about such cyber crimes.
Second most hit nation
According to a recent report by Cyber Point, a cybersecurity firm revealed in their report (in October) that India is the second-most country in ransomware attacks in the world. Though the US stands in the first position, cyberattacks on Indian businesses are increasing at a high percentage.
The surge in attacks is as high as 50 percent according to the report. In September, Prime Minister Modi’s personal website was hacked and hackers also hacked his Twitter account and posted tweets asking followers to donate cryptocurrency for National Relief Fund.
Being Challenged
According to a report by a survey data company acquired by Finbold.com, 68 percent of hackers try to hack people and business is to get challenged by fellow hacker groups. While 53 percent of hackers target is to make money while 51 percent hack in order to learn more about the tips and techniques.
Nearly 49 percent just hack to have fun while 44 percent accounts for growing hacking careers. Around 8 percent hack just to show off their hacking skills. Websites are the prime targets of these hackers as nearly 71 percent attack them directly.
Microsoft in its latest annual report revealed that Russia-based hackers are the biggest nation-state hacking attack launchers on their customers. The company said that it issued more than 13,000 alerts to its customers over the last two years about the hacking attempts.
“Nation-states attackers are well-funded, well-trained, and have more patience to play the ”long game,” which can make identification of anomalous activity more difficult. Like cyber criminals, they watch their targets and change techniques to increase their effectiveness. To protect our customers, Microsoft spends significant resources monitoring and disrupting nation-state attacks attempted on our platform,” said Microsoft in their report.