NEWSROOM

The increase in online shopping in the pandemic has benefited cyberpirates. While cyber attacks against the trade sector have increased by 56% worldwide, phishers also took advantage of the interest in Covid-19 vaccines, and 40% of the attack e-mails were designed specifically for vaccines. Now it's time for those who make vacation plans. Berqnet General Manager Hakan Hintoğlu warned, “The increased interest in sweepstakes and gift campaigns has also increased the risk of being caught in fake content and phishing attacks.”

*** This release is originally published in Turkish.
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İSTANBUL (TR) - Despite the digital transformation that has accelerated during the pandemic process, it is seen that the cyber security awareness of users is not yet at a sufficient level. Especially the acceleration in e-commerce continues to pave the way for cyber hackers. According to the global Cybersecurity Threatscape Q4 2020 report analyzed by the Turkish cyber security products manufacturer, Berqnet, attacks on the trade sector around the world increased by 56% in the last quarter of 2020 compared to the same period of the previous year. In attacks against customers of e-commerce sites, the first target was payment information with 33%, followed by personal data with 27% and identity information with 20%. In this process, cyberpirates did not hesitate to turn people's curiosity and interest in Covid-19 vaccines into opportunities. Approximately 40% of all phishing emails related to the pandemic were found to be related to the Covid-19 vaccine.

Berqnet General Manager Hakan Hintoglu, who noted that this table is similar in our country, said: “The gradual normalization, which started especially after the complete closure process we left behind, has put vacation plans ahead of issues such as e-commerce and vaccination, just days before the summer months. In addition to online shopping, the increased interest in competitions, sweepstakes and gift campaigns has now increased the risk of being caught in fake content and phishing attacks such as gift holidays.”

“Last year 130 thousand people believed in the promise of ‘Free Maldives Holiday'”

Referring to the fact that holiday reservations are made over the internet just like shopping, Hintoğlu said that with the effect of restrictions, the need for vacation has become more prominent than ever before, and that attention in the digital world has dropped: “Attention deficit is of course very normal in a process that affects human psychology like an pandemic. However, 99% of cyber vulnerabilities are unfortunately caused by human errors. A link that is clicked without thinking or a completed form can cause material and moral damages that are not compensated. Especially in today's conditions, the fact that the holiday becomes a basic need increases the interest in content that promises discounts or advantages with the effect of economic difficulties. As Berqnet, we created a fiction last year with the message ‘Free Maldives Holiday’ to raise awareness of internet users against phishing attacks and we saw that 130 thousand people clicked on the link prepared by us without any control. Unfortunately, this proves how low cyber security awareness is in our country. If it was not us who prepared this link and images, but malevolent people, 130,000 people would have fallen into the network of cyber attackers. Under the current conditions, we can say that more people are the target of phishing attacks.”

Being protected is not as difficult as it seems

Hakan Hintoğlu emphasized that, as Berqnet, 80% of the users in Turkey were unconscious against phishing attacks in their researches until today, “In addition to phishing attacks, 70% of the majority have secure URL addresses and 65% of the population have strong passwords. There is a serious lack of knowledge to create. However, simple measures such as having information about phishing attacks, where our encounter rate is very high, checking whether the URL is safe at addresses where critical transactions are performed, such as banking, and creating strong passwords rich in characters, numbers and letters, are very effective in preventing cyber threats. The use of solutions such as firewalls and antivirus that allow the necessary security measures to be taken is now a guarantee for every internet user. We will continue with the awareness measurement research we do in regular periods. With our newly launched social responsibility project "Cyber ​​Security for Everyone" (herkesicinsiberguvenlik.net), it is among our goals to raise the cyber literacy and awareness of our people and to build a safe digital future.”