Hello;
Read this http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38755584
In my professional life I often have to deal with cybercrime. Often my acquaintances become victims of these criminals. I personally monitored the illegal Internet "TOR" trying to answer difficult questions about the identity of cybercriminals. It is not easy and often not feasible. Only in reference to the article in the former Soviet Union happens so badly I doubt it but maybe I'm wrong. To sum up, I would like you to answer some simple questions:
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteNo I haven’t. I think that we as computer scientist have enough knowledge to know how to be safe. However it can happen obviously one day to me.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
Personally not, but some of my friends yes. I don’t know if I can call it online criminals, but there was a situation during using very famous portal booking.com where my friend provided his credit card information for the hotel (as every listed hotel requires such information for booking purposes) and the employee of the hotel used this card few weeks after that and stole around 10 000 zł. Thankfully card was insured and bank employee noticed that and he got money back.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
Yes as I mentioned above. Similarly one of my friends decided to buy shoes on some Italian website, and payed by debit card. Unfortunately shoes were not shipped, and later on he figured out that this is fake shop and they steal money in this way. This time card was not insured and there was no option to get money back.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
As I wrote above, 10 000 zł and in second situation around 400 zł.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
If there will be such possibility why not. I am always trying to aware my family and friends, that they should not use very simple passwords, not log into banking with public wifi, that they should now write down passwords on a paper and so on.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
No I did not.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
Definitely not, they are from many other countries. I found by accident forum where people shared with each other credit card information of strangers, because when someone was paying in shop they were taking pictures and they using this credentials to pay for something or sometimes for verifying subscriptions to Netflix and similar.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteNo never. Why should I?
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
No I have not been victim of online crime.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
Hmmm, I recall only one situation when my brother was using ATM and after couple of days he saw on online banking page, that somebody took a lot money from his account in another city.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
He lost about 20k zl. But after this situation bank told him that if he wants to get his money back he need to report a crime on the police. After couple of weeks bank returned his stolen money.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
You mean awareness campaigns? If yes, maybe someday, right now I don't have time to waste for additional things like awareness campaigns.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
No I have not and I also don't know any person who paid using Bitcoin.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
And who is true Russian? If you mean people from USSR or people speaking Russian then my answer will be no, not only Russians are users of Tor and dark net . For example myself, sometimes I am using Tor network, just for fun and I am not from Russia :D.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDelete- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
No.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
Not yet.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
This is a xenophobic question, which I won't answer.
However, conflating BitCoin with cybercrime is just wrong, on many levels.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteNo I have not.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
No I haven't. I used to get emails asking about my personal data etc but I have never answered them :) Nowadays filters work better and they automatically move such mails to the spam folder.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
Not serious ones. My friend's password to mail account was cracked once but it wasn't official one.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
As far as I know nothing, just a little bit of time to restore password.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
No I don't.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
No I have not. I have never had any reason to use BitCoin.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
Why only True Russians? I have never think about such connection. I am sure that the goverments of the most influence countries use tor, dark internet and have huge impact on that so there is also Russia but not only Russia. People from other countries use it as well. Everyone who knows how (which is not so difficult) and wants to do so will use it.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteYou mean did I have a contact with cybercrime? Yes, but in a very simple way, by getting spam of fictional invoices for the products that I'd never bought, sent in the .exe file, that was obviously bogus.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
Fortunately - no. Neither me nor my friends.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
I'm sorry, are you asking about promoting cybercrime? :) Or about evangelisation my friends about potential threads? If the question refers to the second sentence then yes, I do, even by sending recent security alerts to my friends, that are posted on niebezpiecznik.pl or zaufanatrzeciastrona.pl for example.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
Not yet, unfortunately, I don't have any of them in my wallet.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
No (source: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-table.html)
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteThere was a situation, when my friend was hacked, and through his cracked page they asked me to borrow money, but I'm careful in such situations, and just got in touch with a friend on the phone.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
no, I was not a victim of cybercrime, there was a situation when my pages were hacked into social networks, but nothing more serious.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
Unfortunately yes. my father was a victim of phishing, but the help desk helped him get away from trouble
How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
Since I consulted my father on time, he did not spend anything to prevent this problem.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
My specialization is a little bit different from cybersecurity, but if possible, of course yes.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
not yet, perhaps in the "bright future" I will invest in this money. or to mine them
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
since I was born in Ukraine, I've heard a lot about this situation. and from the native speakers themselves. There was a moment when I saw exchanges with "black" data. The legislation of the post-Soviet countries does not prohibit such activities. and many simply do not care about what's happening on the Internet. On Russian trackers can be found from unlent films and music, to prohibited materials.
Someone stole about 800 PLN from my credit card once. I was a quite long time ago and the bank procedures to cancel unapproved transactions was much more troublesome than nowadays. Everything ended well, but it took some paperwork and time. I'm not aware if something similar happened to any of my friends.
ReplyDeleteI don't plan to take part in any campaigns. I haven't used bitcoins yet.
To be honest I don't understand the part about Russian speaking users mentioned in the article. It seems like the comment is related to particular forums where you can buy stolen items and definitely doesn't refer to a majority of TOR users or cybercriminals. As far as I'm concerned dominating language on the internet as well as on the darknet is English. My conclusion is that Anton from SentinelOne isn't doing his work properly or BBC editors have cut some important part of the interview and it's lacking its context. Or maybe Anton doesn't exist at all and BBC just wanted to use trending keywords considering that the news was published shortly after presidential election in US which was allegedly rigged by Russian hackers :)
Google accounts failed once again, so my previous comment wasn't added...
ReplyDeleteI got an impression that the "expert" from the article is really dumb or he is a total amateur. Either him or the author of the article. Eventually both of them. Bad Russians, bad Bitcoin and so on and so fort. Seriously?
I want to answer first four questions together.
There was a situation in my workplace: my workmate was waiting for some information about his shipment or something. By a coincidence, the same day he got a fake e-mail about... shipment and he opened it and downloaded the attachment being connected to the company's VPN.
That was one of those "pay to unlock your drive" e-mails. It wouldn't be a problem, but because of the VPN, our shared disk got encrypted.
I don't know the costs and the details, but our IT Administration team got finally a challenging task ;)
I have never participated in cyber crime campaigns and I have never paid with Bitcoins, because (unfortunately) I don't owe any.
By the way, do you know that in 2010 there was a guy who spent 10 000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas? Just check how much is 10 000 Bitcoins today ;)
And regarding this Russians theory, I think it has to be a really poor article to suggest something like this.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteNo, I never had a contact.
- Have you been victim of online criminals?
- Did anyone fall victim to online criminals?
I was not a victim of cybercrime, but I know some friends. Most of them are not advanced users of the internet. I'm concerned about the lack of awareness.
I try to monitor the topic of network security and be sensitive to any signals that may concern me. Like my bank, my portals, and used software.
- Do you think the only true Russians are Tor and other dark web users?
I would't like to write, and reply to this question
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteNo, not really.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
No, but some of my friends have.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
Yes, they did. Mainly this was identity theft, but it led to loss of significant amount of money.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
They didn't share with me the exact number, but judging by their faces it was a lot of money?
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
If I have such a possibility, I will definitely do it.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
No.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
Dark Internet Site users are everywhere. In each and every country and each and every place on Earth. It's not something that is culture-bound.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteNo I haven't.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
No I haven't.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
Nobody told me anything about such incident.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
Don't know.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
Yes why not.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
I was using crypto currency market place so I wasn't paying for anything particular but other currency.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
Tor is international, it's not Russian. As far as I know even facebook is available via onion protocol.
Thanks,
M
I have never had any experiences with cybercrimes. I don't know anyone who had. I have never used bit coin, but I think it is interesting way to keep money during some severe financial crisis. Especially in short term if you want transfer money quick and in secret. Probably Russians costitute the most numerus group.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the interesting article. I will answer your questions in points.
ReplyDelete1. No, I have never experienced cybercrime.
2. As far as I know, I have never been the victim of computer crime. However, computer crime can be understood very broadly and no one can guarantee that they have ever experienced the effects of computer.
3. Yes, one of my colleagues had a problem with the bank account - somebody helped her spend money. It was a long time ago and it was the result of careless handling of scratchy fields and passwords.
4. If I remember correctly, the loss did not exceed two thousand Polish zlotys.
5. I also work in high school, this is a very important issue. The youths consciousness is low. Maybe someday I will tackle this subject in a broader social action that may say more to youngsters
6. No, I have never paid this currency.
7. I do not like to generalize because such arguments can be unreal.
Hi!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the article.
Actually I never had anything in commen with cybercrime and I don't know anyone, who was a victim of a cybercrime. I also do not use bitcoin.
I only heard that one my husband's collegue from work had some virus, that during online payment was creating a request to the bank for the power of attorney for the account. The sms with the code came at man's mobile phone, he typed it into the website thinking that it was a payment confirmation, but actually he agreed for the power of attorney and all his money was transfered out from his account.
I don't think that only Russians are dark net users. I don't know why such opinion is disseminated.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteWeird question and I haven't.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
Few times, but I have enough experience to have backup plan for everything :)
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
Sadly, yes.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
Nothing special.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
Can you elaborate on this?
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
Nope.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
You are making me laugh. Of course, not. In my honest opinion a lot of Poles are using Tor.
Yes, I’ve met cybercrime. I wasn’t victim, but my friend’s teenager daughter was attacked on Internet with harmful, bad comments. My friend, her mother reported this to the police. They initiated the proceedings, but suggested to find hacker who could help find the perpetrator. The case is in progress, such events happen very often, and this is a huge problem to lead investigation effectively and legally bring justice.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, taking part in cybercrime campaigns won’t help overpowering it effectively. What’s I believe more in, is educational aspect of such actions, explaining the problem to the younger people who can be technically better in the struggle in the future.
As for paying anything for BitCoin’s, I haven’t any practical experience.
Answering other questions, neither me personally, nor any of my friends haven’t personally met cybercrime with financial lost. Responding to the theory indicated in the article, I guess not only Russians (USSR) are dark site users. This is a kind of generalization coming directly from the facts available on Internet and known for everybody as disclosed (no matter intentionally or not). It may also work as the idea which is to disturb us, introduce a mess and leave “the real” criminals alone.
- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteFortunately, I have not. Like none of my friends, as far as I know.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
As far as I know, I have not been a victim.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
I don't know. Maybe some kind of data leakage.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
I don't. Neither me, nor my friends have met cybercrime losing money.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
I don't.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
I don't think that only Russians are TOR users. There is no reliable data picturing the structure of the TOR users. One can also say, that maybe other nations are invisible and are cautious while using such sites.
Cybercrime is something that doesn't influence my life at all. I'm not even sure how BitCoins work, even though I've attempted to understand it many times ;) But this subject seems very interesting and I wish you good luck in your research!
ReplyDelete- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteYes I have but I am pretty suspicious and that is why I have not been a victim yet. My friend's company had a problem with one strategic clients. Someone get access to its email and change bank account in an invoice.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
As I wrote above - nope.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
As I wrote above - yes ;)
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
It is confidential but a lot.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
No, I do not.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
No, I have not. It is interesting currency but I did not use it.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
I am sure it is not True, but probably are numerous users. This is source of this opinion.
Thanks for detailed questions :)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete- Have you contacted cybercrime?
ReplyDeleteNo, I haven’t.
- Have you been a victim of online criminals?
No, I haven’t. However my friend came across ransomware malware. It wasn’t nice because he lost valuable data.
- Did any of your friends fall victim to online criminals?
As I wrote above. I remember also that my colleague showed me a phishing e-mail he got.
- How much has he lost through internet crime, if you know?
He has lost a lot because he did not have backups. It was very painful for him.
- Do you plan to participate in cybercrime campaigns?
Yes, I would like to. In my point of view it is very important topic. I think there is a lot to do in this area.
- Have you paid anything for BitCoin's?
No, I haven’t. On the other hand cryptocurrency seems to me to be an interesting issue.
- Do you think that the only true Russians are Tor and other dark internet sites users?
No, I don’t think so. I disagree with such statements. We should not generalise - it usually hurts someone. In my opinion Tor and Dark Web can be used in good faith especially in countries where privacy is limited.
THX all of you ...
ReplyDeleteThis is very important for me