Chapter 1 Cyber Threats Singapore Faces THREATS TO INDIVIDUALS Individuals tend to fall victim to cybercrime for two reasons: lack of cybersecurity awareness, and poor cyber hygiene practices. While having a connected lifestyle is almost a necessity today, many individuals are not sufficiently diligent about securing their digital lives. From CSA’s Public Awareness Survey conducted in August 2016, one in three respondents said that they did not install security apps in their mobile phones, citing reasons such as not seeing the need to, or that the app took up too much space. Other poor practices include not managing their passwords securely, connecting to open and non-password protected Wi-Fi networks in public places, and not adopting Two-Factor Authentication when the option is available. The most common cyber threats to individuals are compromised e-mail accounts and malicious websites. E-mail accounts may be compromised by malware sent through e-mails (e.g. phishing e-mails). Such e-mails are targeted and may appear personal. They prey on the likelihood of a person clicking on links or opening attachments, with messages containing payment requests, warnings, threats or other triggers for action. By clicking on malicious links or opening malicious attachments, individuals unwittingly allow unauthorised access to their e-mail account. Once the attackers have gained entry, they can carry out more e-mail scams by impersonating the legitimate e-mail account holder, or they could dig deeper into the victim’s system to steal login credentials, banking information and other personal data. Some users assume that the standard filters in Web-based or corporate e-mail servers will block out all malicious e-mails, and therefore exercise less care when opening e-mails. As attack methods evolve, attackers will keep trying to circumvent such filters. In short, e-mails should always be handled with caution. Many individuals may also fall victim to malicious websites when they click on unfamiliar Web links or pop-ups while surfing the Web. Malicious websites generally attempt to spoof legitimate ones, luring people into transacting there instead of the actual website. This is a common technique to elicit personal data, login credentials, or even money from unsuspecting individuals. In Singapore, legitimate online merchants and services that have been spoofed include PayPal, Google, Dropbox, and the e-services offered by the Ministry of Manpower and the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority. As e-commerce, e-services, and Cloud storage services continue to grow in availability and use, users need to be more aware of such attempts to steal their personal data and money, to avoid falling into such traps. Ransomware is a category of malware used by attackers to encrypt data on targeted systems and demanding a ransom for the data to be decrypted. 2016 also saw an increase in the number of ransomware incidents reported to SingCERT. Individuals and SMEs in Singapore who reported being victims of ransomware have generally chosen not to pay the ransoms, but instead would restore their data from backups. Performing regular backups is one of the key ways to deal with ransomware3. (See Page 31 on ways to deal with ransomware) SingCERT released an advisory on May 2016 providing tips on how to deal with ransomware – [SingCERT] Ransomware. (2016 May 6). Retrieved from https://www.csa.gov.sg/singcert/news/advisories-alerts/ransomware 3 16 17