10 Things About Cybercrime Everyone Needs to Know
Your Awareness Is Your Safety
10. Elder Fraud Exist
Hackers and scammers have common scams targeting America’s Hardest Working Genration’s retirement fund. 🤬 FBI reports $3 Billion Loss to Elder Fraud every year. Scammers use everything from romance scams to tech support scams on our grandparents. A favorite tactic of scammers is to pretend to be a grandchild in trouble and request thousands of $$$.
If that doesn’t make you shake your head in disgust at scammers and hackers, let’s go to number 9.
9. Ransomware Used US Government Tools to Shutdown A Country
After the NSA’s tools were leaked online, Russian-backed nation-state actors shut down the country of Ukraine in 2017 by targeting their M.E.DOC tax software. WIRED dubbed the attack history’s most devastating attack. The attack caused $10 Billion in damages. The international insurance giant, citing the attack as an act of war, said they were not paying any damages.
8. You Donated to Peace and Terrorism Got the Money
In October 2023, scammers tricked victims who thought they were donating to charity. Whatever side of the conflict you stand on, let’s agree that we like knowing where our money is going. So, to be told that you are donating to charity and then have the money sent to Hamas would bug anyone. At least when Al-Queda and ISIS converted teenagers on Twitter, they claimed it.
On a serious note, the Israel-Hamas conflict is just as terrible as any war. I don’t think this needs moral grandstanding. For the average person trying to respect the people involved while ingesting that, we will never understand the guilt trip of not knowing if you accidentally donated to war is just a consequence of modern warfare.
7. Minors Who Identify as LGBTQ+ Are At Risk for Extortion and Sex Crimes
Several violent groups have been identified, and their TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) are particularly disgusting. These sextortion scams target young people who may already feel isolated. Every child deserves protection from sexual exploitation.
When did we stop warning kids about creeps on the internet?
6. Some Cryptocurrency Scams Are Preventable
We must empathize with the person who had fortunes stolen from them in cryptocurrency right from their very wallets. In an attempt to further date this article pending its reuse next year, I won’t give you an example. Instead, I’ll bet that your new feed is being bombarded with some knock-off next-gen lazy Madoff of the quarter (that’s a little clever; give me a thumbs up in the comments).
Learn to ask two questions: Do you have a crypto-lawyer, and are you SOX compliant? I’ll tell you all in a future article about how these questions can save you the headache of frozen $ millions.
5.$8 Trillion Global 🎬💩🎞️
Cybercrime is an $8 trillion global problem, and all of the efforts to stop it are motivated by the fact that countries use it to avoid sanctions. While the CISA, FBI, and NSA do great work protecting the citizens, they come in last place compared to protecting critical infrastructure and businesses. I don’t blame the agencies if they don’t protect the country; we will have no citizens to protect. Until the problem is fixed, taxpayers’ dollars will continue to be stolen and used for tomorrow’s wars.
4. Cybersecurity Professionals are Real People with Real Stakes
The CISO of Solar Winds ( A $Billion Tech Company) was charged with fraud. Cybersecurity professionals can claim that they are of the people and have the incentive to be for the people, seeing as they are the only ones going to prison. Can we say with a straight face that the CISOs who have been charged recently have done worse damage than oil spills or bailout-worthy crises?
3. We are Making the Problem Worst
By 2025 IOT Devices (Internet of Things, aka Smart Devices) will total 75Billion. That’s great if you are thinking about an automated, integrated life where your coffee reheats itself, and the washer and dryer start themselves. The problem is that IOT devices are known to have poor security. The warnings of poor security can’t get in front of the demand for ease of and increased quality of life. As if to serve as an on-time example of how unequipped we are to solve the problem, we have discovered that executive orders will not fix the problem (or have not yet).
2. Out of Sight and Growing in the Dark
Just because we have created a safer version of the internet where tech companies are held liable for trolls and cyberbullies doesn’t mean they aren’t growing on another part of the internet. All of the offensive stuff you band makes its way over to fester and nurture the subsequent hate group riots.
1. Without Cybersecurity, You’ll Fall Victim to 2 Cyber Attacks per year
Every day, 1.5 Million to 3 million people are victims of e-mail scams called phishing. Phishing hides links and malicious codes in files attached to the email. At these rates, without cyber awareness training and email security, every internet user would average two phishing attacks a year.