This is how they trick Poles into big money. False investments and sensational fake news are a plague

Last year, the war on the eastern border also had a major impact on the landscape of online security. Most of them concerned false investment offers or sensational fake news. Attacks of this type are aimed not only at individual users, but increasingly also at company employees. Therefore, experts emphasize the importance of training teams in cybersecurity. According to Orange estimates, only a few percent of companies are currently doing it.

– Last year was definitely dominated by the war in Ukraine, which, apart from the physical dimension, is also strongly reflected in cyberspace. Already at the beginning of this conflict, we had a wave of devastating attacks and wiper malware, i.e. ransomware that does not demand ransom, but destroys data. Nearly a hundred pro-Russian groups have been established that cooperate with each other and carry out DDoS attacks against a number of targets in Poland and other countries supporting Ukraine. We also observed many other threats, such as disinformation and fake news, says Robert Grabowski, head of CERT Orange Polska, to the Newseria Biznes agency.

However, the data published in the new CERT Orange Polska report shows that last year the main threat in the network was still phishing, i.e. attacks based on manipulation and social engineering. Its most popular form is sending mass SMS messages impersonating various companies and institutions with a link leading to a fake website. Last year, phishing accounted for over 40% of all all the threats faced by the CERT Orange Polska team. Most of them (about 44 percent) included false offers to earn huge amounts of money quickly through various types of investments, e.g. in shares of well-known companies or cryptocurrency exchanges. Data phishing was also used by sensational fake news, and money – by fake shops and also popular a year earlier, the so-called. fraud on the buyer.

Artificial intelligence helps protect against cybercriminal attacks

– In addition to phishing, a large share of cyber threats was also recorded by DDoS attacks, which accounted for approx. 20% of all cyber threats. of all the attacks we identified last year – says Robert Grabowski.

Last year, DDoS attacks were slightly less powerful (on average 2.5 Gbps compared to almost 3 Gbps in 2021), but there has been an upward trend in recent years. At the beginning of January this year in the Orange Polska network, a record-breaking attack with a strength of almost 544 Gbps was repelled.

The third place on the podium of the most common cyberthreats last year was taken by malware, responsible for approx. 16 percent. incidents. – The basic protection tool in our network is the constantly developed Cyber ​​Shield supported by artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. This is our answer, among others hundreds of thousands of phishing domains that appear every year – emphasizes the head of CERT Orange Polska.

Statistics show that after the introduction of AI algorithms to CyberTarcza, the number of blocked phishing domains quickly increased to a record level. In 2020, there were about 11,000 of them, a year later this number already exceeded 150,000. – In 2022, there were as many as 13,000 in CyberTarcza. wildcard entries. Using this type of blockade, we are able to protect against an exceptionally large number of malicious, phishing sites based on subdomains created within one malicious domain – explains Robert Grabowski. – In total, last year CyberTarcza protected about 5 million people from losing data and money and blocked 130,000. fake domains.

The expert reveals the methods of cybercriminals: Attacks based on social engineering

Cybersecurity is a challenge not only for individual Internet users, but also for business, regardless of the industry and scale of activity.

– The main threats we see are related to configuration security, software and phishing attacks that exploit employees – says Piotr Markowicz, director of strategy and ICT development at Orange Polska.

As he points out, attacks based on social engineering often affect business, which is why it is important to build awareness among employees about these types of threats. Despite this, according to Orange estimates, currently only a few percent of Polish companies care about training their employees in this area. – When conducting educational activities, e.g. in our own company, we also call for people who have already acquired these skills to share this knowledge with family and friends – explains Piotr Markowicz.

Another area that companies should pay special attention to is software – not only the security of the code itself, but also of the process of its creation. – A very important area in cybersecurity is also industrial infrastructure, industrial security – emphasizes the director of strategy and ICT development at Orange Polska. – We modernize factories, invest more and more in technologies, introduce industrial internet of things (IIoT) solutions, which gives us new opportunities and new functionalities, but we often forget about their cyber security. By neglecting this area, we risk not only losing data, but also that production will be interrupted, the supply chain will be disrupted, and customers will not receive goods on time.

The expert emphasizes that in terms of cybersecurity, the most important thing is comprehensive preparation of the company for the fastest possible detection and appropriate response to a potential attack. – It is important to act not only reactively, i.e. when we are already attacked, but also actively and much earlier – emphasizes Piotr Markowicz.