Europol’s Annual Cyber Crime Report Discusses Effects of COVID-19 and Evolving and New Trends

Europol has just released its annual Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment, in which it reports on the latest trends and current impacts of cyber crime within the European Union and beyond. The report emphasizes the impacts the COVID-19 has had on the cyber threat landscape. It notes that the pandemic demonstrated how cyber criminals take advantage of society when it’s most vulnerable, enhancing many existing cyber threats and challenges. The report discusses how criminals quickly exploited the pandemic to attack vulnerable people, with tactics like phishing and online scams. It also observes that ransomware attacks have become more sophisticated, targeting specific organizations in the public and private sectors through victim reconnaissance and threatening to auction off the comprised data to increase the pressure on victims to pay. One of the new trends Europol observed is SIM swapping, which allows perpetrators to take over accounts. Criminals fraudulently swap or port victims’ SIMs to one in the criminals’ possession in order to intercept the one-time password step of the authentication process. Read the report at Europol.