Cybercrimes rise as culprits snare gullible users

Hameed Ashraf | NT
Bengaluru
With the drastic rise in internet penetration, cybercrime has become one of the emerging challenges for the Bengaluru police. For yet another year, Bengaluru tops India in the highest number of cybercrimes registered in 2022 so far.

As per the police records, in the last five months around 3,659 cases have been registered across nine Cyber Economics and Narcotics (CEN) police stations in the city. In 2020, there were 10,013 cases that cost more than Rs 108 crore and although the number of cases decreased to 7,462 in 2021, the amount involved jumped to Rs 157 crore. In the last five months, the cyber swindlers have already extorted around Rs 200 crore from their victims, sources from the police said.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) portal shows a 306% rise in cyber-attacks between 2016 to 2022, where nearly 66% of the cases registered each year were in ‘Pending Investigations’ mode, due to the pattern and volume of the crimes.

In the past few months, the cybercrooks have been giving sleepless nights not only to the public, but also to the government officials. Growing number of cyber-attacks on government portals show that the criminals are looking beyond just financial extortion. Senior police from the CEN department said that hackers and ransomware groups are unleashing specialized malware to disrupt public services, steal sensitive public records, and leverage government-linked cyber insurance.

A ransomware is a specific type of malware that, when downloaded, encrypts a user’s device to prevent access to its files. Such malware then asks for ransom to decrypt a company’s data. Failure to do so may lead to various types of disruptions of services in both public and private sectors. They have typically been used to extort money from corporations.

Despite several awareness campaigns from the CEN department and various drives to identify the cyber frauds, people in Bengaluru still fall prey to diabolical offers and schemes shared via SMS or phone calls from unknown sources.

“Sometimes, though, the nature of cyber-crimes is such that even if investigating agencies do all the right things and follow all the standard procedures, they are difficult to crack. For instance, since these crimes often extend beyond the boundaries of the country, obtaining court orders in multiple jurisdictions and following legal assistance treaties signed by India with other countries leads to cases remaining stagnant for months on end,” sources said.

As per the sources, Bengaluru West division tops the list with 875 cases, followed by North-East (626), South (456), South-East (366), Central (357), Whitefield (341), North (333) and East (305).
CEN police had recently said that there is a surge in cyber crimes targeting children over previous years. Additional Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru West, Sandeep Patil said that children should be taught the basics of cyber safety such as not responding to texts or photos sent by unknown persons. “Dealing with the digital world comes with its own drawbacks. Children should refrain from posting personal details such as their phone numbers and residential addresses,” he said.

However cyber experts as well as the police mutually agree that awareness is the key to remain safe from cyber criminals. People have to be alert and avoid sharing personal information and should not trust unknown sources easily.

“Users should not click on unknown links and if they do fall prey to such fraudsters, they must immediately approach the police,” the expert said. People should also frequently change passwords and pins securing their banking and mailing applications.

With digital transformation on the rise and the increase in sophisticated cyber frauds, more stringent processes and protocols are required to be followed in order to be financially protected from cyber losses.

According to Bengaluru city police, financial fraud victims can launch a complaint by calling 112 and the case will be registered by cops as a Cybercrime Incident Report (CIR) and transferred to cyber crime officials in the CIR control room