Within 24 hours of the recent bombing and shootings in Norway, Internet thieves were committing cybercrimes by sending out phishing emails to collect donations to aid victims. Unsuspecting and generous people give money to cyberthieves, never realizing their generous funds never reach the victims.
Cyber criminals are heavily exploiting Friday’s bomb blast in Oslo to trick people into visiting websites infected with malicious software.
Over the weekend, links purporting to show video footage of the explosion in Norway began appearing on Facebook. The links does not do what it claims to; instead, anyone clicking on the link is brought to a separate page to complete a survey, with criminals making money for every time someone visits the page. On other occasions, the fake video leads to people inadvertently downloading some nasty software onto their machines.
On the more positive side about 100,000 people are taking part in a rally in Oslo to show actual support for the victims of Friday's shooting spree and bombing that killed 76 people.
Cybercrimes continue to happen in alarming numbers, Internet Security Awareness is not yet increasing proportionately—the lacking ingredient to curtail this growing trend being Internet Security Awareness Training for every employee with access to a company network and the Internet.
Stu Sjouwerman
KnowBe4
