Opportunists have always looked for the weak link, that chink in the armour that can be exploited. The pandemic has provided many opportunities for cyber criminals to take advantage.
Falling victim to a cyber fraud attack can have devastating outcomes on a business and can result in major financial losses. Data breaches severely damage trust and impact reputation, which is hard to regain.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lin Jian has denounced as “groundless” assertions in a recent Canadian national cyber threat assessment report that named China, as well as Iran, North Korea and Russia, as its greatest cyber-crime risks, fearing espionage and attacks on critical Canadian infrastructure.
The report by the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE) released Monday acknowledged that since the Covid-19 pandemic, many individual and organisation activities have migrated onto the digital sphere, while cyber-threats are becoming more sophisticated due to the increase of hacking talent and cyber tools’ usage world-wide. The CSE said it was aware of the potential that Canadian proprietary information and intellectual property related to the fight against Covid-19 might be stolen by cyber threat actors. The CSE also noted that there has been ongoing online foreign activity trying to influence elections in multiple states around the world. Even though Canada is considered a low priority target, its close media ties with the US could potentially result in some form of collateral political manipulation.
The cybercrime ecosystem is growing despite a global effort to enact cyber-crime related legislation. This is because cybercriminals take advantage of jurisdictions that have lenient or no cyber-crime laws. The CSE insisted that any future safeguards must include taking the social and technical aspects of internet usage, pledging to advance and invest in cybersecurity while providing arms-length support to Canada’s critical infrastructures. The report also declared that a key component to successfully combat cyber-crime is reciprocal participation with other jurisdictions to prosecute cyber-criminals.
Canada’s relationship with China has recently been strained by the arrest of Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou and Canada’s repeated condemnations of China’s treatment of Hong Kong and of ethnic Uighurs in XinJiang.
Despite U.S. and U.N. sanctions designed to stop the illicit financing of nuclear weapons, North Korea continues to baffle the world with its unprecedented success in sanctions evasions and cybercrime. As countries scramble to find consensus on cybersecurity protocols, North Korea has moved quickly to expand its cyber capabilities both at home and abroad. This signals to U.S. policymakers that as sanctions tighten in other areas, North Korea continues to exploit the vulnerabilities in cybersecurity to acquire funds for its dangerous nuclear weapons development program.
The cyber market’s size and lack of legal safeguards is a major attraction for North Korean financial crime as the country’s cyber operations are low-risk and low-cost, with potentially high gains. According to Nam Jae-joon, former director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, Kim Jong Un himself equated the importance of developing cyber capabilities to that of nuclear power, claiming that “cyber warfare, along with nuclear weapons and missiles, is an ‘all-purpose sword’ that guarantees our [North Korea’s] military’s capability to strike relentlessly.”
Two people have been arrested in Cork on Thursday as part of a major Garda and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation into tra...
