Saturday 29 December 2012

Be very careful: 7 mil Malaysian smartphone users exposed to cyber hacks

Seven million users! That's a lot of smartphone users exposed to cyber hacking.

Next thing you know, people steal money from your handphone and not your wallet. Scary, isn't it? Check out the statistics below.

Between January - September 2012, losses incurred from cyber crime is as follow (according to Bukit Aman director of Commercial Crime Investigation Department):-

Illegally intercepted online purchases   - 1,298 cases
Text messaging service or phone calls - 412 cases
Hacking                                                     - 24 cases
Internet and phone banking                  - 74 cases

Total : RM21.8 million

The case of illegally intercepted online purchases recorede the highest in lost money, i.e. RM14.5 million.


Seven Million Smartphone Users Exposed To Threat From Cyber Hackers

KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 2,2012): About seven million smartphone users nationwide are exposed to threats from cyber hackers who use smartphones as mediums through which to carry out fraudulent activities like stealing money.

Bukit Aman director of Commercial Crime Investigation Department, Datuk Syed Ismail Syed Azizan said a lack of awareness about smartphone security made smartphone users easy victims.

"The hackers' modus operandi is to send a malicious Trojan application disguised as a text message to consumers.

"They are unknowingly charged when they reply to the fake message. "Consumers only realise this after receiving costly phone bills although they did not subscribe to the phony services," he said.

The hackers' activities were executed via downloaded applications such as "type on" that caused the victims to bear the hidden expenses even when they had uninstalled the application.

Lookout Mobile Security was quoted as saying that worldwide users lost millions of dollars last year via malware and toll fraud that attacked smartphone users who had accessed applications from suspicious sources rather than trusted ones such as Apple and Google.

Ismail said police statistics records showed that from January to September this year, losses incurred from cyber crime via text or phone call totalled RM21.8 million. The cyber hackers targeted users of Internet and phone banking services, hacking into and abusing these networks.

Cases of illegally intercepted online purchases recorded the highest losses at RM14.5 million (1,298 cases) followed by text messaging service or phone calls at RM3.4 million (412 cases), hacking at RM3.3 million (24 cases) and Internet and phone banking at RM590,000 (74 cases).


Source

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