Zakariyya Adaramola
23 February 2009
Internet-based attacks and crimes are increasing in Nigeria as 'greedy' criminals continue to steal data from businesses and individuals.
The sad story however is government's attitude to curb the menace. IT World's Zakariyya Adaramola, wrote on the implications of the delay to act fast on the criminals.
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commssion (EFCC), may have been used by the immediate former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, to harass and intimidate those perceived as enemies of his government, especially those who fought against the third term agenda, but the anti-financial crime agency under Ribadu did something very well: the fight to reduce cyber-related crimes in the country. Under Ribadu, the EFCC put many measures on ground to curtail cyber crimes and a number of arrests of the so called yahoo boys.
But no sooner was Ribadu booted out of EFCC that the 'profit-driven' cyber criminals resumed and even increased and perfected their activities. They are daily becoming sophisticated so much so that cyber experts are warning that if government fails to do something to stop them, many Nigerians may be in danger of fresh attacks. This is because cyber criminals, experts said, are now discovering new ways to exploit people, networks and the Internet and many people are very vulnerable to such attacks.
The Managing Director of Global InfoSwift, a Lagos-based IT firm, Mr. Solomon Edun, said theft and other fraudulent practices being committed online is increasing by the day and many are being stolen by the day.
According to Mr. Edun, Nigeria is the third among the top 10 countries, which are highly susceptible to fraudulent attacks through electronic mails and web pages. He said the statistics from Internet Crime Complaint Center highlights an ever-increasing concern around the nature and dynamics the fraudulent attacks are taking place.
He said the financial services continue to be the most targeted sector at 91.7% of all attacks recorded in December 2007 only, adding that this trend is there to continue if necessary steps are not urgently taken.
His words: "According to 2007 Internet Crime Report, Internet Crime resulted in nearly $240 million in reported losses in 2007, a $40 million increase over reported losses in 2006.
"As financial institutions in Nigeria are merging complex IT infrastructures and merging their products and services online, their vulnerability and intellectual property theft is increasing.
" The retrieval of consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials is often achieved by stealing credentials directly using key-logging mechanisms and phisher-controlled proxies or by misdirecting users to non-authentic websites."
"The goal of awareness campaign is crucial to increase the level of security awareness of the banking customers and encourage electronic interactions amongst the banks in Nigeria", he said.
As did Edun, a world-renowned IT company, Cisco, also warned that fraudsters would wreak more havoc online this year than they did last year and 2007 put together. In the 2008 edition of the Cisco Annual Security Report made available to Daily Trust in Lagos, the company said more businesses and individual may have their data stolen, adding that fraudsters may also gain access to accounts of card holders. And this has been happening as some Nigerians are fallen victims of criminals who daily send scam mails to email addresses, telling them to register their ATM cards.
These mails, purportedly from Interswitch, request ATM card holders to confirm their cards because " our services are being upgraded to a new better and more secured system." The fraudsters even threaten that any one who fails to register his/her card "immediately will no longer be able to use the card with ATM machines or ATM transactions and the card will be cancelled or terminated."
But Interswitch Limited has dissociated itself from mails being sent to mailboxes requesting ATM cardholders to register their cards, saying the mails did not emanate from the company. Speaking with Daily Trust, the Managing Director of Interswitch, Mr. Mitchell Elegbe, swiftly dissociated the company from such mails, saying fraudsters are at work and that cardholders should be ware. According to Mr. Elegbe, Interswitch would never tell any of its cardholders to reveal their PINs under any guise. He said this is not the first time the mails of this type are being circulated, warning Nigerians not to fall prey of fraudsters.
The Interswitch MD said the company would intensify the cardholders' awareness campaign began last year. He explained that the main objective of the campaign, which is already running on radio, newspapers, magazines and billboards, is to protect card holders from fraudsters, who temper with ATM cards' PINs in order to have access to cardholders banks' accounts. According to Mr. Elegbe, the campaign is being sponsored jointly by Interswitch and banks, and would continue to run until all cardholders are fully aware of fraudsters.
"With the introduction of payment cards in the country, adoption of all forms electronic payment channels ranging from Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), point of Sales(POS) terminals, kiosk, voice, Internet banking and mobile banking have been on a steady rise.
The rapid growth in card adoption and usage only goes to indicate the potentials of well-orchestrated nefarious activities targeted at not only the unsuspecting cardholders but also the banks. Whilst instances where cardholders have fallen victim to these activities represent far less than 1% of all transactions, they have raised fears amongst current and potential cardholders as to the security of the cardholder and payment done using cards. And that is why we have begun a Cardholders Awareness Campaign to protect them from fraudsters", said the Interswitch boss.
Though the anti- Money Laundering and Cyber crime Coalition at the National Assembly last met with the some EFCC officials, bank officials and some computer professionals on the need to intensify the fight against cyber crimes and money laundering in the country, not much was heard after that.
To effectively tackle the problem of economic and widespread internet fraud in the country, experts said, there must be enabling legislation as the absence of enabling legislation to properly spell out punishment for offenders has been responsible for the increasing rate of cyber crimes in the country. And until government does that, cyber crimes will continue to increase in the country.
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