Scammers stole £1.2bn from British bank customers in 2018

Year on year figure up by 25%, and firms must reimburse victims, says UK Finance

Scammers stole £1.2bn from UK bank customers in 2018, according to official data, with a near-500% leap in counterfeit cheque fraud, indicating some criminals are resorting to old-school techniques.

The headline fraud figure is up almost a quarter on 2017, when the total was £968m. There was a 50% leap, to £354m, in the amount lost to scams in which people are duped into authorising a payment to an account.

Why shame prevents people from reporting cybercrime

Embarrassment has become an obstacle in the Halifax Regional Police force's efforts to understand how much cybercrime occurs in the municipality. 

People are frequently so ashamed of getting duped online that they don't come forward and report the crime to police, said Staff Sgt. Kevin Smith.

That means cybercrime is woefully under-reported, making it difficult for police to know what is happening online and to identify culprits.

Facebook Squares Up to Law Enforcers with New Privacy Focus

Mark Zuckerberg has detailed his vision for the future of Facebook: a “privacy-focused” messaging and social platform which will see the News Feed marginalized as users switch to encrypted WhatsApp and Messenger communications.

The new privacy-centric platform he hopes to build over the course of the next few years will be focused around several key principles: private interactions; end-to-end encryption; “reducing permanence”; safety; interoperability; and secure data storage.

“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about,” said Zuckerberg in a lengthy post.

IBM’S WATSON NOW FIGHTS CYBERCRIME IN THE REAL WORLD

YOU MAY KNOW Watson as IBM's Jeopardy-winning, cookbook-writing, dress-designing, weather-predicting supercomputer-of-all trades. Now it's embarking on its biggest challenge yet: Preventing cybercrime in finance, healthcare, and other fields.

Starting today, 40 organizations will rely upon the clever computers cognitive power to help spot cybercrime. The Watson for Cybersecurity beta program helps IBM too, because Watson's real-world experience will help it hone its skills and work within specific industries. After all, the threats that keep security experts at Sun Life Financial up at night differ from those that spook the cybersleuths at University of New Brunswick.

Removing the cyber criminal’s mask of anonymity

Cyber crime is a serious business in Asia Pacific, with over US$1.7 trillion lost to cyber attacks last year, equating to 7% of the region’s GDP and representing around a third of overall global cyber crime.

This is largely because digitalization is rapid and technologies to combat cyber threats aren’t being implemented quickly enough to keep up; as fast as detection and prevention techniques improve, cyber crime continues to become more sophisticated. Attitudes towards cyber security are outdated, with a survey of IT and business decision makers revealing that although half have experienced a cyber attack, only a fifth see cyber security investments as a business differentiator.

Biggest IT security threats in South Africa

As businesses and consumers alike become increasingly reliant on technology and online systems for efficiency and entertainment, they become more vulnerable to attackers.

And the more services you are subscribed to, the greater your potential attack surface.

Cybercrime is therefore a growing problem around the world, and the types of attacks are constantly evolving to dupe more people or exploit new vulnerabilities in existing systems.

Mumbai-based Italian Firm Loses Rs 130 Crore to Hackers in Con Job

Mumbai: In perhaps the biggest such online heist, a Mumbai-based Italian firm lost Rs 130 crore to suspected hackers who allegedly convinced its local managers that the money was needed for an acquisition, police said Monday.

The hackers sent emails to the head of the Indian subsidiary of the firm through an email account, which looked similar to that of the group CEO, a police official said.

The hackers also arranged a series of conference calls to discuss about the acquisition, following which heads of the Indian subsidiary transferred the amount in given bank accounts time to time, he said.