“We tried to deliver your package, check the status here”, “Click here to confirm your vaccination appointment”, “Your test result is there, see it here”: Sentences like this are currently popping up – with spelling and Grammar errors – via text message or email on many cell phones. During a press conference yesterday, Friday, communications provider A1 confirmed that these are not isolated cases.
Criminals on the Internet have high season at Christmas time, and so-called “FluBot” attacks have accumulated in the recent past, said Natascha Kantauer-Gasch, who is responsible for consumer business at A1. This type of attack is malware that aims to steal bank details from victims via spam messages. Especially at Christmas time, criminals tried to harm their victims using this scam, because they would spend more time at home, ordering packages – and currently also booking test and vaccination appointments. The most common attacks in the private sphere no longer happened via laptops, but rather via cell phones.
A1 security chief Gilbert Wondracek said that in the previous year there were around 36,000 reports of cybercrime in Austria in the private sector, 26 percent more than in 2019. About a third of these cases could be resolved, the majority not. Whereby Wondracek estimates that the number of unreported cases is even higher. “Many do not report attempted attacks,” said the expert. Even A1 itself is not spared from attacks; In the previous year, 30,000 attacks on the infrastructure were repelled. Wondracek: “We’re playing cat-and-mouse with criminals.”
Kantauer-Gasch advises users not to click on unexpected messages, not to open any attachments to suspicious emails, to pay attention to the formulation of sentences, to check the email address of the sender and to check the Internet address. (Rome)
Source: Nachrichten
