Browsing his e-mails, Hussam finds a message supposedly from his bank advising him that his account has been blocked and requiring him to provide his online banking credentials urgently to rectify the issue. Maria gets a congratulatory SMS telling her that she has won a lottery and asking her to call a number with her bank account details to receive the funds.
Suresh gets a call from somebody impersonating his telecom provider indicating that his account is being upgraded and requesting his personal details to verify his identity.
Hussam, Maria and Suresh are all potential victims of phishing, smishing or vishing fraud attempts, a form of cybercrime that is growing globally led by rapid digitisation, rising affluence and as yet low customer awareness.
Broadly referred to as social engineering based cyber-attacks, scams such as the above aim to manipulate human weaknesses to reveal confidential personal identity information.
Typical details that are sought to be hacked are account or card details, email credentials, answers to common security questions such as date of birth or mother’s maiden name, one-time passwords sent by banks and other valuable personal information.
Fraudsters use fake websites that resemble those of well-known organisations, spoof telephone numbers to impersonate somebody and attempt to install malware on computers and mobile phones to steal identity related information. In most cases, no bank systems are compromised. However, the cyber-attacker gains access to legitimate customer credentials which are used to tap into accounts and steal funds.
Unfortunately there is a rising number of such attacks in the UAE.
A growing menace
Phishing and social engineering are part of a wider range of cyber-crimes that are together expected to put at risk, over the next fi ..
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