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Sharing intelligence helps us beat hackers
Indonesia is particularly vulnerable to these new threats. The country has already been in the midst of rapid digitization of financial services, with new payment platforms like Gojek’s GoPay and OVO.
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A hacker. (Shutterstock/File)
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OVID-19 has changed the way the financial services industry operates in a very short time. The digitization of financial products and services has accelerated, and operations, most of which had previously taken place in traditional office and bank branch settings, have rapidly gone remote.
Both trends have increased the attack surface of the industry, giving cybercriminals new avenues to target sensitive customer and company data.
Indonesia is particularly vulnerable to these new threats. The country has already been in the midst of rapid digitization of financial services, with new payment platforms like Gojek’s GoPay and OVO.
GlobalWebIndex reports that Indonesia also has the highest rate of e-commerce use in the world – an overwhelming 90 percent of internet users between 16 and 64 years old say they shop online. New, rapidly growing digital platforms and customers who are inexperienced in transacting online are ripe targets for cybercriminal networks, and the pandemic has offered a whole new set of lures.
For example, more than 98,000 high-risk domains were created with a COVID-19 theme from January through the first week of April, according to DomainTools. Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) found more than 1,500 financially-themed domains offering COVID-19 related credit, loans, insurance and more.
The bulk of the domains were created in March. By the second week of April, the numbers of new high-risk domains were down 92 percent following a crackdown by domain registrars. The sudden rise and fall of this tactic shows how threats are constantly evolving, with cybercriminals quick to exploit a vulnerability and then change tactics once defenses are built.
To best capitalize on new attack strategies in Southeast Asia like botnets, cryptojacking, and ransomware, cybercriminals collaborate through a variety of networks. For example, less tech-savvy criminals simply buy ransomware services or kits from more technical hackers. Criminal groups are now not simply holding stolen data for ransom and returning it to the victim after payment, but also posting it online for other threat actors to use and even auctioning it off on the dark web. Many cybercriminal networks run like formal, legitimate companies, with diverse functions and organizational roles like CEOs, recruiters and even customer service agents who, for example, guide victims through how to pay to recover their data or regain access to their systems.
