Prevention and Counteraction of Cybercrime

Currently, the internet and computer technologies are rapidly penetrating all spheres of human activity. On one hand, this opens up a number of prospects for Belarusian citizens and society, while on the other hand, it brings about new risks and threats. Thus, the rapid development of telecommunications technologies, the swift increase in the number of electronic devices and services provided to the population using information technologies has led to an increase in the number of cybercrimes.

Cybercrimes are crimes related to the use of computer technology (crimes against information security, theft using computer technology, blackmail, extortion).

Recently, the number of cybercrimes has increased significantly, the motives and goals of cybercriminals change over time, and the danger of the crimes committed grows each time.

More and more often, fraudsters use methods of "social engineering" to gain access to personal data, bank card payment details, passwords, and other confidential information.

Typically, cybercriminals impersonate representatives of legitimate organizations and institutions to deceive citizens into revealing personal information and providing criminals with money, goods, and/or services. Cybercriminals target information resources belonging to the banking sector, government agencies, and commercial organizations, as well as confidential information, personal data, property, and financial resources of citizens.

The most common manifestation of cybercrime is the theft of funds from citizens' card accounts. In most cases, these crimes become possible due to the careless actions of the victims who have provided access details to their bank accounts. Criminals obtain the necessary details for committing criminal transactions through the following methods.

Phishing (from English fishing). As a peculiar fishing rod, criminals use a specially created website with a form for entering bank account access details, and as bait – some pretext communicated to the victim to transition to this site and fill in payment details. For example, a criminal tracks fresh advertisements for sale on the site kufar.by. After viewing the phone number of the advertisement author, they find it in one of the messengers (Viber, Telegram, WhatsApp) and engage in correspondence, supposedly wishing to buy the item for sale. They then send a link to a fake prepayment page in the messenger, where the seller needs to enter their card details to receive money from the buyer. When clicking on the hyperlink, an inattentive internet user may not notice the substitution, as such pages visually resemble the design of well-known service websites (Kufar, ERIP, CDEK, Belpost, various bank websites, etc.). The address of the fake webpage may also resemble a real one (kufar-dostavka.by, erip-online.com, belarusbank24.xyz, cdek-zakaz.info, etc.). If the victim falls for the bait and fills out the form, the corresponding access details to the bank account end up with the criminal. Within minutes, the perpetrator accesses the bank account and transfers funds to bank accounts or electronic wallets controlled by them, registered under fictitious names.

Hyperlinks to phishing sites can be sent not only during correspondence in messengers but also during communication in social networks, as well as being posted on other websites that supposedly sell or buy something. Recently, there have been increased cases of creating phishing sites tailored to user queries in search engines. Citizens end up on them directly from Google and Yandex after queries like "Belarusbank personal account", "Belagroprombank internet banking". Seeing a familiar title and logo of the site in the search results, but not verifying the website address against the actual domain name of the banking institution, the victim fills out the opened authorization form, the data of which is sent not to the bank, but to the criminal. By following such a fake address and entering confidential information, a person sends it to the fraudster.

Important! Do not click on suspicious links. For the web version of Internet banking, use only the official website of the Bank, and for the mobile version – only the mobile application downloaded from official stores. Carefully examine the website where you enter personal data. Always check the presence of such a website on the internet.

To implement fraudulent schemes, messengers (Viber, WhatsApp) are also used. Incoming calls are maximally camouflaged as calls from the bank or MTS company, A1: on the screen

the logo of the bank, MTS company, A1 (fully or partially) may be used, and the displayed phone numbers may be similar, so it is important to be especially vigilant and pay attention to the numbers, as well as to the channel through which the call is made.

Important! Never, under any circumstances, disclose your bank account details, bank card details, and identification number of your passport to anyone, including individuals claiming to be bank employees, MTS, A1 companies, law enforcement agencies, without the ability to reliably verify that these individuals are who they claim to be. Employees of banking institutions, MTS, A1 companies never use messengers (Viber, Telegram, WhatsApp) to contact clients.

Fake online stores. The latest technologies allow the creation of fake online store websites that look just like real ones. Fraudsters copy the design and logos of the pages. On such sites, users are offered popular clothing, jewelry, or electronics brands at low prices. Sometimes users receive their paid orders, but most often they do not. Recently, fraudsters often create online stores on social networks. Such stores disappear quite quickly, only to reappear under a different name.

How to recognize a fake online store: if any product is offered at an incredibly low price – this is a clear sign of fraud. Another sign is if the seller insists on prepayment or payment via electronic or telegraphic transfer.

To protect yourself and your financial resources from such methods of theft, it is necessary to:

not disclose logins, phone numbers, passwords, PIN codes, account details, secret CVC/CW codes, data regarding recent payments and expiration dates of plastic cards to third parties;

exclude the transfer to third parties of temporary passwords received in SMS messages for confirming transactions, as well as your bank cards, by any means;

enter secret data only on websites protected by security certificates and encryption mechanisms. The domain names of these resources in the address bar of each browser start with https://;

regularly monitor completed transactions using the payment history section;

not refuse an additional level of security (multi-level authentication systems);

choose a complex password, using a combination of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, which will be understandable only to the account owner. Change the password every 2 – 4 weeks if you use someone else's computers to log into the internet banking system;

do not use automatic password saving in the browser if access to the personal computer is open to third parties or if a public access computer is used to log into the site;

link access to the personal account on the internet banking site to the MAC or IP address. This action will ensure the maximum level of security.

In case of discovering a lost bank card, do not post its photograph on the internet in order to find the owner. The information contained in the image of the bank card is sufficient for carrying out operations using this data without the knowledge of the bank card owner, which is what criminals take advantage of.

Deputy Prosecutor of Braslav District E.S. Isakova