Identity theft, sextortion and a fraudulent SIM swap are the latest cybercrime trends internet users need to look out for.
Cyber attacks and online crimes have become global problems, but they play out differently in South Africa because of our unique socioeconomic standing.
In a briefing on cybercrime, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) cyber security expert and research group leader Billy Petzer said this is because SA has one of the biggest economies in Africa but also a high unemployment rate that encourages crime.
The most prevalent crime is identity theft, which online criminals use to access bank accounts or to scam others through fraudulent SIM swaps.
“Identity theft is the biggest one. People get identity documents through online means and open accounts to get cars, TVs and so on in their names and that affects the victim’s credit score. SIM swaps are a big challenge which is hard to combat. People do fake SIM swaps to try to access a person’s account and use the cell number to get the one-time password [OTP] to access such accounts,” he said.
Another example of identity theft is the cloning of social media accounts to con online friends while pretending to be that person.
“People will add friends to the new [cloned] account and ask for money through messages, claiming they have a big emergency. Because it’s supposedly an emergency, people don’t ask questions and pay,” said Petzer.
Another increasing cybercrime is sextortion. This is when people online try to obtain intimate images and personal information from others to be used to blackmail them for money.
“Scammers chat with people on dating apps and try to get intimate images of them. When they have them they find the victim's family members on social media and threaten to share the images with them. People often tend to pay to avoid the embarrassment,” he said.
While the country has put into effect the Cybercrimes Act (in 2020) to prevent such crimes, police have not yet arrested such scammers.
This is because most victims are too embarrassed to report such crimes. “In addition, many online scammers are not based in the country and are therefore hard to prosecute,” he said.
“We advise people to make their social media private so people don’t access their photos and information. People should also enable a multifactor authentication — not just a password but another code that comes through the cellphone, which makes it difficult to hack accounts.”
About 90% of the population now has smartphone access and more than 82% have access to the internet. The country’s population is largely made up of the youth who contribute immensely to the use of technology and online services.
“But what the act does is criminalise the behaviour. It is up to the individuals to report it, otherwise, it can’t be investigated ... and it makes it easier for online criminals to get away with it,” Petzer said.
Another method to prevent cybercrime is biometrics such as iris and retina identification to verify security.
However, this too has also fallen prey to crime, according to the new biometric threat intelligence report by iProov. CEO and founder Gur Geva said biometric attacks are intensifying and becoming more sophisticated.
One of these is presentation attacks, which is when photos, videos or even masks are held up to a screen to fool the technology into capturing the features of the identity being defrauded.
“Cyber criminals continue to find new, sophisticated ways to intercept this technology. With this in mind, organisations need to remember that not all face-verification technologies can keep up with the rapidly changing threat landscape or have the same level of security, resilience and ability to adapt to novel threats.”
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