CyberMetrix

Recently you may have heard a story about “pig butchering”. It’s a financial rip off scam that uses social engineering. This podcast is a fascinating deep dive into the scam. It’s all in plain English. Non technical. This is definitely worth a listen to understand just how powerful of a weapon social engineering is. The best defence is to understand the psychology and the techniques. There’s no other way. #socialengineering #scams #pigbutchering #darknet https://lnkd.in/gyzE39yp

⚠️ Every parent needs to know about this cyber crime because it’s killing kids at an alarming rate. This is a public safety emergency. It’s called financial sextortion, and it’s surging up 7200% according to NCMEC. The FBI just issued another round of alerts across the country. Here’s what parents need to know: - Almost all of the financial sextortion targeting minors is coming from a cybercrime group called the Yahoo Boys located in Nigeria and Ivory Coast. - Almost all of the financial sextortion targeting minors starts on 1 of 3 platforms: Instagram, Snapchat, and Wizz, according to NCMEC. - Criminals are using catfish accounts to send hundreds of thousands of follow requests to boys on Instagram, impersonating young females. The moment the teen accepts, the criminal takes screenshots of the mark's Follower and Following lists. - Then, the criminals lure the kids to Snap, where they coerce the kid to send an explicit photo. Boom. Now, the relentless blackmail starts. “I have your nudes and everything needed to ruin your life… unless you send me $300 right now.” Here’s what kids need to know: - Criminals can send what appear to be “live” photos and videos on Snapchat with the Red and Purple icons, but are actually pre-recorded videos. The catfishes are more convincing than ever. - Criminals can screenshot and save Snapchat videos, bypassing the notification that typically alerts users when a screenshot has been taken. - The moment an Instagram user accepts the follow request of a scam account, their follower/following lists are compromised. This gives criminals immense leverage to use as blackmail, threatening to send the compromising photos to all friends and family. These lists are the primary source of leverage in nearly all financial sextortion schemes targeting minors. - If it happens, do not pay. Talk to a parent/adult. Help is available. 💡💡ACTION: Instagram has the power to mitigate a vast majority of sextortion incidents by making one simple privacy change today: Allow users to keep their Followers and Following lists always private and make this the default setting for minors. Currently, the instant an Instagram user accepts a scammer’s follow request, their followers/following lists are exposed to the criminals. This privacy change would mitigate a vast majority of sextortion cases. Meta allows Facebook users to keep their Friends list truly private, but it does not afford teens this same privacy setting on Instagram. Why? *** Carson’s death was entirely preventable. I told Snap about the exact scripts and tactics that these criminals were using back in the summer. Better detection of the scam scripts and anomalous account activity, paired with in-app safety messaging or automated blocking, would have prevented this tragedy. #cybercrime #sextortion #childprotection #parenting #privacybydesign #safetybydesign

Following on from the well-received 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Strategy (2023) and the innovative focus on small and medium-sized businesses (Shield 1), we have prepared our strategic vision to enable SMB cyber security uplift through a government-backed, industry-led whole-of-Australia solution. Download a copy of the strategy from https://lnkd.in/gQ33eNJC We believe that executing our solution at scale across ecosystems will help us achieve the possibility of Australia being the most cyber resilient by 2030. #technology #innovation #cybersecurity #SMBs #supplychain #supplychainsecurity #cyberstrategy #cyberresilience