Cybercrime continued to rise last year. The National Center against Organized Crime (NCOZ) recorded an increase in cyber attacks of almost 25 percent compared to 2019. The perpetrators of attacks on computer systems focused their attention on healthcare and attacked hospital facilities several times, the headquarters said in its annual report today.
Official statistics do not seem to indicate an increase in cybercrime: they state that while the NCOZ registered 8,417 the year before last, it was 8073 last year. . This has risen from 5,000 to 10,000 crowns since last October, which has affected, for example, the statistics of online fraud. While by the end of August last year the perpetrators had committed 5080 cyber acts, by the end of last August there were 5,600.
The perpetrators of sophisticated hacker attacks who attack hospitals proceed in combination – in the first phase they attack the computer system, in the second they encrypt it. In the subsequent demand for ransom almost exclusively require payment in cryptocurrency bitcoin, wrote NCOZ.
“In the case of highly sophisticated cyber attacks, it can be assumed that this is the activity of hacker groups at a considerable professional level, where very often the main target of offensive activities are first economically strong states and then in other so-called waves of cyber attacks. “the headquarters stated.
According to the NCOZ, a certain share of criminal activity in organized groups can also be attributed to so-called state actors. “The motivation of organized crime groups linked to the state is usually other than criminal gain. Mostly it is espionage or intrusion into critical information infrastructure systems,” police said.
However, the most typical case of cyber attacks investigated remains the perpetrator, who overcomes the security of the computer system and gains access to the victim’s data, which he can continue to handle arbitrarily. Attackers are increasingly attacking email accounts, social networking accounts, or Internet banking accounts.
Another form of crime is the so-called sniffing, where the offender intercepts communication in the network and thus obtains sensitive data. This often happens on unsecured Wi-Fi connections, on manipulated e-mail servers and, more recently, on attacks on home routers. Offenders then access sensitive data, such as passwords, payment details or personal or intimate content, which they use to coerce the victim.