Beware of Ransomware This Year 2023
Cyber Security and Hacking
Ransomware Tech Epidemic Could Be the Biggest Threat in 2023
In 2022, a digital pandemic swept the world. Major ransomware attacks struck the Colonial Pipeline on the East Coast of America, which was the operator of the largest fuel pipeline.
It also affected the largest meat processing company in North America along with a major healthcare system in Ireland.
Moreover, the attackers scrambled the files of the organizations and demanded large sums of money to unlock them.
These American Firms lost millions of dollars to protect their data. This topic was raised during the first summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden that year.
Top casinos across the gambling industry, including the ones listed on sites such as www.promoguy.us, have been spending top dollars, in an attempt to implement better security features, hoping to avoid data theft and ransomware attacks. In 2023, the government will strike back soon and many countries have been developing offensive cyber forces by the cyber intelligence in the military for the same.
Cybercrime in 2023
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum of 2023 was held in Davos, Switzerland. The meeting concluded with a disturbing prediction from one of the leading voices, Jeremy Jurgens who is the Managing Director of Forum. It was revealed that 93% of survey responses believed that a catastrophic cyber security event like the 2021 incident is likely to happen in the upcoming years. It is expected that cybercrime would cost $10.5 trillion annually to the world economy by 2025 as per Cybersecurity Ventures. Basically, cybercrime would become the third largest GDP after the US and China. This growth is mainly due to the Covid-19 pandemic, global economic downturn, and political instabilities like the Ukrainian War. Cybercrime is majorly unpredictable due to advanced AI technologies which make the source untraceable at times. Thus, severe actions are on the way in order to prevent such cases.
Possible Cyber Threats in 2023
As per a WEF report, the mutating threat would be one of the biggest forms of threats in 2023. This could exist in the form of an AI virus that keeps on transforming while infecting various organizations and systems. Edi Rama, the Prime Minister of Albania mentioned that viruses control the way of living and deviate from it. In 2022, Albania witnessed a major cybercrime that brought down critical infrastructure. Cybercrimes have been circulating lately and have been causing severe bankruptcy as well as fraud.
Cybercrime Examples
A massive cyberattack was attempted by groups linked to Russia for hacking the major infrastructures in Ukraine post-invasion of Crimea in 2014.
This left 230,000 homes without electricity for a while.
In 2022, 288,000 cyberattacks became detected against Ukrainian government infrastructure and businesses. The above-mentioned forecast of economic damage worth $10 trillion becomes predicted to become caused by small-scale attacks aimed at extorting or stealing money from individuals and businesses. Jurgen Stock, the Secretary General of Interpol mentioned a 2022 operation plotted against the Black Axe, which is a west African cybercrime group. It led to the arrest of 70 individuals. Groups like these consist of professional hackers, scammers, and fraudsters who are incredibly proficient at credit card extortion, fraud, ransomware attacks, and identity theft.
Conclusion
A very common threat that everyone has been reading about lately is phishing threat. These basically involve sending out emails that fool people into disclosing personal data and bank details. These would result in identity theft or stealing money from bank accounts. Once these attackers are successful in controlling a victim’s identity, they also go ahead and defraud their family and friends. Thus, one must be extremely cautious while handling such emails and messages from unknown senders and must verify their authenticity before sharing personal details to avoid getting bankrupt.
Cyber Security and Hacking
Beware of Ransomware This Year 2023
