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Cyber crooks employ basic social engineering tactics

Analysis of more than 20 billion online threats by managed security service Network Box has revealed that cyber crooks still rely on basic social engineering tactics to lure victims.

According to the firm's internet security analyst Simon Heron, online criminals are getting even more sophisticated and have perfected this basic method to enable them to steal data or to recruit new victims to be used as botnets

He said: "We're seeing a huge number of emails that are designed to drive users to infected sites by persuading them to install an application such as flash updates or, ironically, new anti-virus software.

"Many people are used to Windows updates, for example, so will think it is genuine.

"It is impossible to put a number to them, as these are sites that change by the minute – but there are anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 infected sites a month."

Cyber crooks have perfected their game and long gone are the amateur attempts full of spelling mistakes from years gone by.

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