Increased extortionate demands
The latest semi-annual report of the Reporting and Analysis Center for Information Assurance, or Melani for short, highlights the most important cyber incidents in the first half of 2016, both nationally and internationally. The report focuses on the increased number of cyber extortion attacks. However, the focus is also on various data leaks.
Since January 2016, Melani has noticed a marked increase in cyber attacks accompanied by extortionate demands, the federal agency writes. The goal of these attacks is to make the data unusable for the victims. This is usually done by encrypting the data using Trojans or by overloading the server with malicious DDoS attacks. The victim is then demanded to pay a ransom. The attackers target data or systems that are of value to a private individual or a company and are important enough for the victims to be willing to pay. In the latest Semi-Annual Report of Melani becomes the Strategy The aim of this study is to show the people behind these attacks how they should behave, but also how they can prevent them.
6000 hacked mails
In the first half of the year, Melani received 6000 hacked email and password combinations. These accounts could have been misused for illegal purposes, such as fraud or blackmail, if the password was not changed immediately by the owner, it says. In order to support any victims, the federal agency published an online tool that could be used to check whether one's own e-mail address was affected.
