Cybercrime Financial News

After a yearlong search, Rana Robillard was elated to learn she'd beaten three other bidders for a house in the leafy California suburb of Orinda, just outside of San Francisco.

IT sector and a significant presence of high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) have made Hyderabad a prime target for cybercriminals. In 2023, Telangana reported the highest share of malware attacks in India, accounting for 15% of the country's total, according to the latest India Cyber Threat Report.

Delhi Police on Saturday arrested a fraudster who lured victims into participating in simple online tasks with the promise of earning a huge amount of money. A complaint was received at the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) when Akshay Kumar Singh, a resident of Dwarka, alleged that he had received a message on his telegram account on November 23 regarding a part-time job. The accused person had asked to make an account on the alleged website to buy and sell crypto currency. Additionally, some prepaid tasks were assigned to the complainant and as per the instructions of the accused, the complainant invested Rs 20,16,640 in prepaid tasks from November 23 to November 24.

Cybercrime gangs are looking to rebuild with new tactics after global police operations this year made a huge dent in their activities, experts have told AFP. The gangs have had a bad year so far, with law enforcement operations taking out some of prominent groups including LockBit, a loose network of largely Russian-speaking cyber criminals.

Banks are in a fix over the latest regulation from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) that mandates digital consent for sending commercial communication. Lenders have reached out to the government, seeking clarity on whether consent is needed even for sharing transaction details, a practice currently followed as per Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines, people familiar with the development told ET.

Russia is seeing an increase in the number of crypto bribery cases where corrupt individuals receive payment in tokens such as Bitcoin (BTC), lawyers say.

ICICI Bank has issued a crucial advisory regarding the growing threat of fake UPI payment scams, disseminating the warning through its official social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). Alongside the alert, the bank shared a concise instructional video aimed at educating users on how to identify and prevent these scams effectively. In the video, ICICI Bank emphasizes the importance of cautiousness and urges customers not to react impulsively to unexpected UPI payment notifications. The bank advises recipients to carefully verify the received amount before taking any action, as scammers often manipulate figures to deceive users into transferring more money back than they received. According to ICICI Bank's advisory, scammers typically initiate contact with potential victims, claiming to have mistakenly transferred a larger sum via UPI than intended. They then pressure the victim to urgently return the excess amount, exploiting urgency to prevent careful scrutiny of transaction details.

Mumbai/New Delhi: Millions of students vying for coveted colleges and courses makes India's vast education sector a prime target for cybercrime, experts said, at a time authorities have pointed to leaked question papers appearing in the so-called dark net. Besides, data of innumerable students may also be vulnerable to unauthorized access and misuse. Amid widespread student protests over the past two weeks, the government has raced to withdraw grace marks in the pre-medical entrance exam for MBBS and related courses, cancelled an exam for junior research fellowships at universities, and postponed another exam to admit students to post-graduate medical courses.

Indonesia's national data centre and asked for an $8 million ransom, the country's communications minister was quoted by state news agency Antara as saying on Monday. The attack disrupted some government services, most notably at airports last week, though automated machines were now functional, the communications ministry said on Monday.

Mint. Watch This: Sudden Rise of Cybercrime in India: Mint Explains A dark pattern is a trick used in website or app design to make users do things they didn't plan to do, like signing up for unwanted subscriptions, buying extra items, or sharing personal information.

A Zambian court has sentenced 22 Chinese nationals to long prison terms for cybercrimes that included internet fraud and online scams targeting Zambians and people from Singapore, Peru and the United Arab Emirates

₹10,000 crore to 129 alternative investment funds since then, aiding fund managers looking at startup investments. On the other hand, startups have raised concerns about the so-called ‘angel tax’, which was introduced in 2012 as a way to prevent money laundering, but has hurting them during the ongoing funding winter. Some startups have also come under scrutiny for their treatment of gig workers.

telecom regulator has called on mobile users to report fraudulent calls, text messages and WhatsApps from third-party agencies falsely claiming to be the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and threatening disconnections.

Police coordinated by the European Union’s justice agency have taken down computer networks responsible for spreading ransomware via infected emails

An international law enforcement team has arrested a Chinese national and disrupted a major botnet that officials said he ran for nearly a decade

cybercrime complaints being registered on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal run by the ministry of home affairs between January to April 2024. According to Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), on an average 7,000 cybercrime complaints were registered per day in May 2024, a jump of 113.7% between 2021-2023 and 60.9% from 2022-2023, and 85%of them were financial online frauds. I4C is a body established by the MHA to provide a framework for law enforcement agencies to deal with cybercrime. The massive rise in number of cases can be seen between 2019 to 2024 with 26,049 complaints being registered in 2019, 2,57,777 in 2020, 4,52,414 in 2021, 9,66,790 in 2022, 15,56,218 complaints in 2023 and 7,40,957 in 2024 in the first four months of the year. Most victims were targeted using online investment fraud, gaming apps, algorithm manipulations, illegal lending apps, sextortion, and OTP forwards among others. Over 1 lakh investment scam cases were reported in 2023, according to I4C. In cases of digital arrests, Indians lost ₹1.2 billion in 4,599 cases in the first four months of 2024. Trading scam accounted for 20,043 cases in which ₹14.2 bn were lost to cyber criminals during the same period.

London Drugs has confirmed that files stolen by hackers during a cyberattack in April have been leaked onto the dark web.

Cybercriminals are becoming more prolific and evolving their methods of committing fraud, necessitating robust defensive action from consumers.

Telecom operators are likely to disconnect a record 1.8 million or so mobile connections at one go as part of the government's first countrywide operation to curb cybercrime and online fraud, officials said. This follows a comprehensive investigation by various law enforcement agencies to track misuse of mobile connections for committing cybercrime and financial fraud. «During investigations, it was detected that in many instances, a single handset was used with thousands of mobile connections,» an official privy to the details told ET.

digital intelligence platform (DIP) to the servers of Amazon Web Services (AWS) from those run by state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) triggered a fierce initial reaction from mobile phone companies. They seem to have backed down after the DoT told them that critical subscriber database records (SDRs) of customers won't be stored on AWS. The DIP is used to help fight cyber crimes and fraud. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) had called the move «abrupt and unilateral» in a May 11 letter to DoT secretary Neeraj Mittal and telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. COAI represents India's top telcos Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea. The carriers had added that the shift would compromise the privacy of consumers' personal data due to the inherent nature and architecture of such cloud-based solutions.

Coimbatore: Tamil YouTuber 'Savukku' Shankar has been sent to judicial custody till May 17 by a court here, following his arrest allegedly for making defamatory remarks against women police officials, police said on Saturday. The Coimbatore Court sent Shankar to judicial custody till May 17, they added. The arrest was made based on a complaint by a Sub-Inspector of Police of Coimbatore City for allegedly making objectionable comments against women cops in a recent interview on a YouTube channel.