5 Most Notorious Cybercrimes of 2021
2021 has been a challenging year in every way. We were strangled by the rapidly developing economic crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, and in general, the year was extremely unsuccessful. By the way, cyberspace also shuddered several times from the interventions of intruders, often on a very large scale. We invite you to remember or even learn about the most high-profile cybercrimes of 2021 in our article:
Financial corporation Capital One suffered from the actions of a former Amazon web services engineer. He was arrested.
Capital One announced a data breach that affected more than 100 million US and 6 million Canadian customers. Of course, the statement was already after the suspect was detained by the FBI.
The suspect was a former Amazon employee named Paige Thompson, who was taken into custody on July 29 and charged with computer fraud and hacking the financial firm’s data.
Reuters conducted its investigation and, according to it, Thompson appeared before the Seattle District Court, and after the charges were brought, he received a sentence of detention until the trial on August 1.
Visa credit cards had a vulnerability due to which it was possible to bypass the limit without contact.
Positive Technologies, an international software development company, conducted a study, according to which it turned out that Visa credit cards have security weaknesses. Of course, the main fear was that such a vulnerability could be used by scammers and other scammers who attempted unlimited withdrawal of money from user accounts.
Researchers Lee-Anne Galloway and Timur Yunusov were able to exploit these shortcomings to bypass the verification limits on contactless cards like Visa.
The research was conducted in 5 popular banks of the island nation.
During the test, the researchers were able to avoid the £30 contactless check limit on each of the tested cards, with the terminals being irrelevant. In addition, they revealed a monstrous error, but with credit cards, which worked all over the world.
61. This is the number of arrests that have been made since the shutdown of the global system on the dark web.
The Europolice announced that thanks to the international efforts of laws and rights, they were able to carry out 61 arrests, and they were able to identify and block more than 50 dark web accounts that were involved in illegal activities.
This event was a powerful signal to the entire underworld, which carried out its illegal activities on the darknet. Anonymity is good, but eluding the international wanted list in Europe still won’t work.
Small businesses suffering from cybercrime
A provider called Beaming has said massive cyberattacks have caused small businesses in England to suffer an estimated £17 million in damages. Which led to unbearable consequences and more often bankruptcy of enterprises.
The study also revealed that approximately 2⁄3 of companies in England with a small workforce of 10 to 50 people are frequent victims of cybercrime in 2020 and 2021.
Industrial control systems have become a red flag for cyberattacks
The past couple of years have shown a nasty trend in that malicious actions are often directed at vulnerabilities in production control systems, the number of such crimes has increased to 47.2% in 2020, compared to 44% in 2019. Now the figure is almost 50%. This story affects computers that use Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus.
Such growth will make it clear that computers used in industrial infrastructure are at the greatest risk. And if we draw a parallel with the reports of the Kaspersky Corporation itself, then the threats only continue to increase.
