$700 000 Stolen from Grandfather in cyber attack

I was speaking to an auto mechanic this morning about cyber security for their business. He unfortunately understood what I was talking about as he related the story of his grandfather.

His grandfather is a panel beater and about 3 months ago his mobile phone was hacked with a keylogger. A keylogger is a piece of software that records your keystrokes.

The criminals who had managed to get their keylogger onto his grandfather’s phone recorded his phone banking details. They got his bank, username, and pin. With this information they withdrew $700 000 from his bank account.

The story if it ended there would be disastrous for the business and the grandfather. It is almost impossible to recover from a loss of that magnitude.

The thing was the business was not tech savvy. Customers were invoiced on paper mainly, he had no data base etc. To all intensive purposes he was too small and to cash to hand to matter or so he thought.

Luckily for the grandfather, he identified the theft almost immediately and notified the police who managed to track the funds being transferred between Melbourne and Perth. The transfer was stopped in a Western Australian finance institution. If the police had not been able to trace the transfer quickly and if the funds had made it offshore that would have been the last grandfather would have seen of his cash. The police however were able to return all the money back to victim “grandfather” who is now well versed in cyber attacks on those that have little digital footprint.

What is a keylogger and how do you spot it and protect against it.

Keyloggers are quite common as a useful tool and are used to help check your grammar or auto complete. What they do is watch and record the keystrokes you enter. As you enter information, they are able to execute something in response e.g., auto correct or spawn another program.

When used by a hacker the recorded information can be transferred back to the cyber crook or other malware could be downloaded onto the device.

How can a keylogger get loaded onto a device

·       Clicking a link that opens an attachment/file

·       A webpage has a malicious script that runs when you visit

·       Opening a file attached to an email

·       Open a SMS message

·       Hardware added

How can you detect a keylogger on your mobile phone

·       Your phone gets physically hot. If you close down all the apps and your phone remains hot, it is further evidence. The keylogger is working in the background.

·       The battery drains quicker than expected, feels like the battery life has significantly been shortened

·       Background noises, like a crackle. This can be very faint.

·       Receiving strange messages (the core functionality of the phone is disturbed)

·       Generally acting up – randomly turning off, screen lights up randomly, apps randomly open or close especially messenger apps

·       Excessive amounts of data being used

·       The phone freezes or hangs for a period of time

·       Phone performance is poor

·       Camera and microphone malfunction

How can you detect a keylogger on your PC

·       Your mouse might be slow

·       There is a lag in mouse or keystrokes

·       Disappearing cursor

·       An unknown application is running

·       System performance problems,

·       Program interruptions or errors including system rebooting itself

·       Alerts form your antivirus application

·       For the tech people – use safe mode startup, task manager

Protecting yourself from keyword loggers

1.     Be vigilant and how you use your digital tools (what you click on and where you go)

2.     Be vigilant and aware of the tool itself and how it is working, don’t settle

3.     Know what applications you are running and don’t install shiny new application because they look good without knowing that they are secure

4.     Have good antivirus protection in place

5.     Keep your digital tools updated with the latest patches

Protecting yourself is absolutely important. Even if you believe that you have nothing to steal, if you keep no database of customers and most of your transactions are done offline the reality is that you do have a digital footprint and unless it is protected you are vulnerable.

Your vulnerability not only affects you but all of us. If you get taken down the contribution that you are making to our society is diminished as you become a victim. Instead of being a helper and a contributor you become someone to rescue.

 I encourage everyone to become cyber aware and put in place what is needed to allow you and your business to become cyber resilient.