Fraud makes up almost 50% of cyber crimes, says MyCERT

KUALA LUMPUR: Nearly half of all cyber crime reported in the first quarter of 2016 involves fraud, a specialist from Malaysia Computer Emergency and Response Team (MyCERT) disclosed at the Asia Pacific (APAC) Cyber Security Summit 2016 today.
The cyber crime specialist, who does not want to be named, said 49% of the cases are fraud while 31% involved unauthorised system intrusion.
Fraud also consists of about one-third of cyber crime incidences in both 2014 and 2015, with people between 26 to 40 years of age being the most vulnerable and who do online purchasing and use internet extensively," she said, adding the fraud cases include online purchases, lottery scams, impersonation, love scams, and phishing.
She also disclosed a sharp rise of "ransomware" reports in Malaysia - a programme which locks access to infected devices and extorts device users to pay up to US$500 (RM2,070) to unlock the device.
Ransomware, she said surfaced in Malaysia with two reported cases in 2013, four in 2014, and 84 in 2015.
She warned that there is no guarantee that infected devices will be unlocked upon payment and urged victims to report to authorities instead.
According to data, 47% of ransomware victims are home users, 41% corporate entities, 4% government agencies, and 2% universities.
She said ransomware usually targeted those in higher paying management positions or sensitive corporate information.
She also said there were nine data leak cases in 2014 and 2015 involving highly sensitive information which she is not at liberty to disclose and this was mostly due to extremely easy to crack passwords such as "abc123", "123456"and "admin"..
She advised internet users to use a secure password to act as a good deterrent against unauthorised access as criminals usually prefer easier targets.
Most local companies are very vulnerable to cyber attacks, she said due to the lack of preparedness and systems back up.
"Its important to have systems back up in case of emergency or attacks and have a dedicated cyber security team. Most cyber crimes are likely motivated by money or in some rare cases, just for fun," she added.
One of the biggest challenges of cyber security, she said is victims not reporting or incomplete details.
Last year there were 9,915 cyber crime cases reported as compared to 11,918 in 2014. The highest reported cases were 15,268 in 2004 and 15,218 in 2011.