**you call the victim's meat Why there are people who type using only two fingers and who only have one password and then it's their name their dog's name or their birthday There are people who have no digital awareness They get eaten up by cyber criminals like meat You can no longer just sit in front of a screen all day if you don't know anything about the risks involved and how to protect yourself That's irresponsible Cyber criminals don't see the suffering they cause If the computer that controls the oxygen is not working the hospital will pay the ransom Why because people are about to die Today's hackers wield an unprecedented level of power They capitalize on the flaws in our hyperconnected world to launch attacks stealing our money our documents and our personal data even our identities Anyone can be a victim of this new form of crime From individuals to companies from hospitals to schools and even public authorities hackers will stop at nothing And how far will they go in the future people figure they can make a lot more money from home and with no risk No need to rob a bank and potentially get killed Almost nothing can happen to a cyber criminal You're anonymous and can hack a target of your choice from home $6 trillion That's how much American experts estimate hackers around the world steal every year Cyber crime accounts for almost 40% of all offenses in Switzerland and it's growing every year Cyber attacks increased by 26% in 2022 in Europe and 38% worldwide The weakest link hands down are human beings You can invent all the security systems you want but there no use of people just voluntarily hand over their username and password over the phone and it happens A retired Swiss couple is one example Christian Delus used to be a cook while his wife Dominique worked in child care They shared their story in the hope of preventing others from getting conned by cyber criminals My mother died unexpectedly in May 2022 We were very close and she lived right around the corner I started to worry when I noticed her blinds were closed that day I went over to her apartment and went inside and I found her dead lying on the floor Then I had things I had to do Call the doctor and the undertakers so they could pick up th
e body And that Friday I wanted to go online to look for information about obituaries When I clicked on the one site a message popped up saying my computer had been infected by a virus together with a phone number I should call So I dialed the number assuming it was in Switzerland The person told me I had a computer virus and recommended that I get protection with antivirus software called McAfee Cristian provided his credit card details to pay for the antivirus program He's just one of a growing number of people that fell for a type of online fraud that is well known to police Technical support scams Nowadays local Swiss numbers can be used with voiceover IP services meaning internetbased and potentially from anywhere in the world It's completely legal These crooks use a local number from the area of their victim to gain their trust I authorized them to take control of my PC and then the screen turned black and I was told they would start scanning my PC that it would take some time but that this was normal The man kept saying "Don't worry Everything's fine We're in the process of removing the viruses from your computer Everything's okay." That calmed us down and he was very reassuring But after a while we started getting nervous While Castan's computer screen remained black his cell phone suddenly became very active He received a total of nine text messages each one displaying the sum of 999 Franks and each time the man on the phone asked him to confirm the removal of a virus He was on the phone from 4 to 9 p.m Didn't you find that odd yes But my husband didn't listen to me He was sure that the man he was talking to was the solution The retired chef called his bank the next day No withdrawals had been made but he was suspicious and cancelled all his credit cards A week went by I then discovered that my Visa card had been charged 10,000 Franks Those 10,000 Franks had been transferred to an account in Britain The bank insisted everything was above board and had nothing more to add Outraged Christian Delus went to the police What did you find out it's under investigation but it could take several months to get any real information While 60 to 80% of the victims of conventional offenses contact the police the figu
re drops to just 10 or 15% with cyber crimes due to shame or ignorance Many think there's nothing they can do But filing a complaint is useful for investigators It helps us to detect a pattern where Mr X or Mrs Y are one of many similar cases which makes our job a lot easier We've been able to gather pretty information as to who and where these cyber criminals are It's inhumane These people should be doing a regular job instead of sitting at a computer getting rich quick and they know they're hurting people and entire families It was a massive blow really painful I still see myself as a hacker And the victims victims i don't have any victims Just to clarify I have personally never done anyone any harm through my hacks If you wanted to have 250,000 email addresses in Brazil for example I could sell them to you for a fair price and they'd be fresh affecting real people Sure But I can't know what the buyer does with the data Let's say a client wants to buy 250,000 email addresses in Brazil and they decide to send spam to those addresses If you click on the mail your computer gets hacked and they steal your money Am I responsible for that sure I gave the guy the data but it's not me sending people the mail with the virus And I didn't force you to click on it It's not my fault if people aren't digitally aware enough to know better Anyone who can't help clicking on it only has themselves to blame Sorry but that's life The former hacker calls himself Rabbi Hood in a nod to the folklore hero and his Jewish roots He speaks in the third person and often refers to the synagogue when he just means himself He always wears a mask I always enjoyed working Work is a hugely important virtue You don't get anywhere without hard work and there's nothing worse than laziness But I'm talking about intelligent work My dad busted his ass to earn €15 an hour his entire life And now he's living in a tiny government apartment on a measly pension No way am I going to end up like that I'll do everything to earn a 100 times what he did with a lot less effort My mom died when I was 13 That was tough And it's hard to grow up normally when something like that happens I spent most of my childhood on the computer And that's where I found my true
calling It started with small scams here and there And soon I realized this was the business of the future and that you could earn a lot of money without even having studied I've met a lot of amazing people Not in person or even hearing their voice but I communicated with them 10 hours a day People I argued with and made money with Basically they were my life I didn't go out partying or watch soccer or whatever I spent my youth on a computer figuring out how not to be broke And he didn't need long to find the answer by diving into the darknet a huge virtual marketplace for illegal drugs weapons pirated software pirated movies child pornography and stolen identity documents Transactions are conducted anonymously and are often untraceable We bought a computer simply to venture into this digital jungle A cyber security expert served as our guide and showed us how to protect ourselves We visited chat rooms and sales forums to meet other users I only ever sold stuff Some I won't mention because you never know if the DJSI are watching and we wouldn't want anything to happen to the synagogue Because the synagogue has not gone unscathed He was once arrested after a specific hack went ary He narrowly escaped a jail sentence and then decided to pull the plug The darknet is now history for him The last time I logged on was after my arrest in 2017 I decided to get out of crime I still had 2500 contacts I lost friendships with guys I'd known for a long time It was really hard but it had to be done Instead he since decided to alert people to the dangers of cyber crime and increase their digital awareness Rabbi Hood has emerged from the woods with books seminars and interviews which also earn him money Are you rich yes the synagogue is rich at heart and in its wallet That depends on the Bitcoin exchange rate that day How much Bitcoin i can't answer that because the tax man might get interested in the young rabbi and get the synagogue arrested again Is it a secret just check my returns to see how much I earn Sorry I'm not going to say Cyber crime is booming and the big victims are corporations The number of attacks on businesses jumped by 26% in 2022 and in Switzerland by 61% Organized cyber criminals prefer to target institut
ions organizations banks and industrial companies Their weapon of choice malware The ultimate loss people's jobs This man lost everything including his entire workforce Neja Meta used to be the head of Swiss Windows a midsized company that had close to 200 employees He thought he had prepared for everything when he bought the company in 2016 except cyber attacks These days the entire production process everything is digitalized That makes cyber attacks especially dangerous because if the computers are down everything is down Production is paralyzed Life can change suddenly with a twist of fate as it did in my case And I still have vivid memories Total shutdown All the screens went black It was a Friday A Friday in May 2019 Swiss Windows became one of the first companies in the country to be targeted using malware software designed to paralyze computer systems Hackers extort ransom money in return for restoring the victim's access to their data We called the police but it was completely new ground for them They sent one officer The livelihoods of almost 200 people were on the line and one officer stopped by to look around The CEO and his workforce felt utterly helpless How were they to retrieve the company's computer data the backups were infected too The hackers demanded a ransom around 1 million Franks in Bitcoin We didn't pay for financial reasons We were among the very first to be hacked So we weren't sure we'd get our data back Swiss Windows rebuilt their entire IT system with the help of an IT company A colossal undertaking The workforce had to stay home while the system was reconstructed Production stood still and the company had no access to its orders Nobody knew which windows had been delivered where and when Customers were initially sympathetic but not for very long Many then demanded substantial discounts due to delayed delivery It eventually got so big that Swiss Windows went bankrupt Windows The company was forced to declare insolvency in February 2022 due to a lack of funds Cyber criminals don't see the suffering they cause and that's different to other crime If someone breaks into a store they can see the extent of the damage But a hacker sits in a room somewhere in the world and can't see the su
ffering caused to 200 people as well as to all the customers and suppliers Suffering caused by the click of a computer mouse An employee at the window company set off the storm by clicking on a fake email a fishing attack where opening an email or clicking on a link installs malware on the target's computer 80% of cyber attacks use fishing People still fall for that Sure you'd be surprised Up to 30% of people who attend our awareness courses click on links It's fairly easy for a hacker to get inside a company with hundreds of employees via someone helping them involuntarily And even more surprising is just how quick people are to click Some within 30 seconds but people in more senior positions should know not to click right in theory yes But I can't talk about that We're all human and anyone all the way up to management can fall for these fishing rues Even IT security experts there are no guarantees Dominique Vida knows a thing or two about IT security He's a four-time runner up at the Capture the Flag competition in Las Vegas the Olympic Games of Computer Hacking The engineer now heads a 30 strong cyber security team based in Switzerland His clientele include banks insurance companies and small to midsized businesses Today he's testing the cyber security at a new medical center in Ban The primary concern is patients well-being Could someone steal their medical data as happened to thousands of Swiss patients last year the directors hired SECU Labs to conduct a penetration test A pen test can be used for different scenarios Maybe a company says "We did everything that was recommended for security and we think we're well protected against attacks." The test will determine whether they really are The rise of cyber crime is pushing corporations banks and institutions to carry out penetration tests Hackers generally launch their attacks online but sometimes physically on site Some even make house calls We were given an exclusive invitation to accompany four members of Seculabs as they attempt to infiltrate a medical center in BA The fake hackers are equipped with hidden cameras While management have been informed the rest of the staff have not Dominique Vidal will follow the covert operation remotely Conference room
s and doctor's practices are available for rent in the co-working space in this building The hackers have booked a room Pen testers have to try all connections to the various devices in the internal network I'm in Great Once inside the system the hackers find confidential documents in recycle bins as well as weak points and passwords accessible to anyone We can access tons of medical data correspondence computer images of where the patient's pain is and we even have their personal contact information One of the pseudo hackers then tries to find a target and persuade them to insert a USB drive on their computer Pentests also involve assessing staff gullibility English Sure Uh is it possible to print a document for me uh yes of course Yeah Great A fatal error The employee will install a virus when they click on the file to print The hackers will take over the computer in seconds gaining access to its entire contents and monitoring everything she does in real time Check Yeah perfect Y cyber criminals have taken things a step further Their latest target is the general population stealing our personal data and posting it on the darknet if a ransom isn't paid This quiet little Swiss town was left reeling from hackers Rol made nationwide headlines in August 2021 after the local government was hacked Thousands of confidential documents ended up on the darknet Over 5,300 residents were affected leaving the country stunned A case that alarms local authorities And now to the cyber attack The hackers published residents personal data How did it happen we have to go back 3 months to when Roy was targeted The IT system was easily restored within 10 days because of good backups But the nightmare didn't end there Did they ask for ransom yes we were told to contact them via email which we obviously didn't do The official government website itself says that after a cyber attack you should never pay the ransom The hackers increased the pressure when their terms weren't met by publishing stolen documents The city authorities knew about the documents but said nothing to the public A journalist came across the data on the darknet 2 months later sparking a media storm We didn't inform the public and that was a big mistake We'd initia
lly been told to stay silent and then we couldn't find the right time It was a first for us We genuinely didn't know how to respond We didn't appreciate just how problematic this cyber attack would be The town should have reported the attack Definitely And it did later after the problem became apparent and it blew up in their faces The story hitting the media put major pressure on us People had a lot of questions We had about 800 requests from residents wanting to know how much of their data was on the darknet Over 5,000 data points from residents appeared on the darknet names addresses birth dates and social security numbers But that wasn't all Credit card numbers signatures and a pink slip to an employee Property ownership data as well as valuations on second homes An application for taxexempt status was even available All stored in the depths of the darknet Data that is highly valuable is easy to misuse because there are so many vultures ready to pounce on exposed data either out of curiosity or just to extort people If they have a digital copy of your ID criminals can open new bank accounts or email accounts or other things that require validation with an ID document The major gangs like Babok Lockbit or Black Cat present stolen data online like hunting trophies They operate worldwide But where are they actually based we can roughly say the region depending on the crime Straightforward scams tend to be conducted by people in subsahar and Africa Whereas ransomware attacks are increasingly coming from Eastern Europe or Asia The town of R changed its security after the attack It also trained staff and conducted vulnerability tests on its IT Could Roy happen again i don't know about H itself but there will definitely be cyber attacks on more places in Switzerland You're a pessimist a realist And the figures support his assertion Ransomware attacks rose 35% between 2021 and 2022 worldwide one every 3 hours Hackers are even organized like corporations with separate business divisions Computer virus development localizing targets via security flaws hijacking the target system and stealing the data plus of course negotiating ransoms The gangs even have quality assurance teams to guarantee a smooth post payment proc
ess and they form international criminal associations around the globe Vice Society is one such cyber mafia and the group behind the attack on ro members refer to victims as partners and showcase them on their website They even respond to journalists questions albeit only via email Was it easy to hack Ro yes Did you choose RO at random yes How many hours a day do you work 12 Sometimes 24 When you've started to attack there's no way to go back or sleep or anything else You can turn off your PC when you've encrypted everything in the network or they've spotted you and blocked all ways in Are you afraid of getting caught before we start Advice Society we talked and read a lot about our security We accepted the risks and decided to try We don't want to be caught but we aren't afraid Do you feel guilty no we're not the ones leaving schools colleges or hospitals at risk And we always offer to quickly restore everything We don't ask for hundreds of millions It's their problem if they don't pay The mayor of Roy had a horrible year What would you say to her you should have paid We could have helped you and fixed everything right away You'll hopefully be smarter next time Brash and cynical typical for these modern online outlaws They follow their own logic in this cyber wild west But the FBI Europole and countless other police agencies are on their trail And another man has made tracking them down his personal mission We met him in Berlin where he and two partners run a cyber security company They developed a tool dedicated to scanning and scouring the darknet with the help of a 1 million euro grant from the German government We have a platform that lets us follow cyber criminals on the darknet in real time We can see what they're doing and their victims the companies and infrastructure they're interested in and any stolen data that is already up for sale and especially the campaigns they're planning for future targets Abdel Kada Cornelius originally had a very different kind of career as a chef a job he loved But then tragedy struck His uncle used to sell old military artifacts on the internet And one day he fell victim to a cyber attack The perpetrators switched his bank account with theirs and using stolen credit card
s placed orders from his online store and pocketed the proceeds leaving Abdaka's uncle to foot the bill That was my personal motivation to understand how it was possible for someone to destroy another person's entire life and livelihood using a computer or a smartphone My uncle never recovered from those debts He never got over it And he died with what was left of the debt How much debt in total yes €476,000 He was so ashamed that he ended up killing himself I couldn't comprehend how this kind of thing could happen I decided to go into it and do my very best to ensure that no one else would have to go through this The young chef then devoted his free time to research on the internet and darknet He became self-taught before offering his services as a freelancer He worked up to 70 hours a week both in the kitchen and on the computer A few courses were available but this isn't something you learn on regular public websites You have to delve deeper to find the right circles if you want to communicate with hackers and understand what motivates them Abdelkada managed to infiltrate their clandestine world joining hacker forums under the cover of multiple aliases This enabled him to find out who was planning what From beginners to major groups looking to attack banks Abdakana asked a hacker how much he earned How much do you need to earn close to half a million euros maybe 14 hours You can tell these people have never really worked They've immediately seen how easy it is to make money in cyber crime and have no idea what it means to work hard for your money They've lost touch with reality And now if they start targeting critical infrastructure then even things like hospitals are in danger candidates Seemingly in their own bubble the hackers have no qualms about preying on their victim's most personal data and know no boundaries Violating someone's privacy is cruel enough but some cyber attacks can be lethal Nothing is taboo for the criminal gangs involved They paralyze hospitals and steal patient records In late 2022 the European Union Agency for Cyber Security published a report about the acute danger for the medical sector Thousands of hospitals around the world have already been hacked A baby died in the US after a
computer failure during delivery Hacking a hospital is about terrorism It's about killing people It's about disrupting a whole culture a whole country The hospital will pay Why because people are about to die If the computer that controls the oxygen is not working the hospital will pay the ransom Elon Gritzer knows what he's talking about The Israeli cyber security expert teaches potential victims about how the attackers think and operate His insights are in growing demand worldwide Elon is a pioneer in penetration tests Together with other experts in 2008 he looked at the biggest hospital in Israel for security flaws You cannot walk into a bank into the servers of the bank but hospital you can walk and get around and you can connect your computer to the wall and you sit there and nobody would say anything So we started with that We worked with a few people in hospital who knew we were coming in and then it's just it was so easy too easy So we did it to prove to the country that some sectors are not as protected as the others We sat with the hospital and taught them how to defend better We didn't just say everything is better and went home And then we went actually to the parliament and we talked in parliament and the the government not just because of us but they gave a lot of money to start just start protecting the Israeli hospitals A clinical operation of a different kind that left a scar The Hillel Yafa Hospital in Hyera near Tel Aviv has now enhanced its online security Hackers gained access to its internal network during the Corona pandemic The hospital has over 2,700 staff members It began just before 6:00 a.m 45 minutes later we knew it was a cyber attack We immediately disconnected the hospital's computer systems Fortunately no data was stolen But while MRIs respirators and other medical devices worked the computers were shut down And having everything on camera enabled the hospital to carry out a postevent analysis This type of attack is like an earthquake far worse than the consequences of co and for the hospital administrators it's a disaster the entire internet shut down immediately when the computers are working we can access the databases with two clicks that includes any previous surgery a pati
ent may have had their medical history All that information we used to have was suddenly gone As you can see we resorted to using the physical files filled out by hand which is what we used to do back when I was a trainee doctor 30 years ago The hospital managed to remain operational Its management immediately made the news public while also turning the cyber attack into a textbook case for training purposes We opened our doors to colleagues from hospitals across the country So they could see what we were experiencing We invited experts to visit the ER the delivery rooms and operating theaters to learn from this chaos A cyber attack is never easy The first thing is to admit it happened Somehow we were able to change the rules of the game This time there was a positive outcome and it does prove one thing that with cyber crime escalating worldwide the best defense remains prevention And another lesson that we all need to heed that logging on to the internet brings the entire world to our doorstep and it's a world where not every visitor is a friendly one Everybody back Heat Heat hey baby it g**
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