Criminals have launched online attacks using AI. Every organization in many countries of the world, including Germany, is facing hundreds of cyber attacks every week. Holger Munch, President of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), said in an interview to the German media, “The threat of cyber crimes is increasing year by year. increasing and on some occasions these crimes cause great economic and social harm.
Munch said that in recent years cybercriminals have targeted public administrative institutions, universities and doctors’ offices the most. “These attacks can have a widespread impact. For example, the administration may be unable to function for several weeks,” he said.
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What do attackers do
The police officer warned that there is a need to increase security against cyber attacks. Many systems in Germany are still not encrypted. A lot of data is stolen from such systems. “Criminals are more and more attracted to it if the technical barriers are relatively weak,” Munch said.
Even if the cyber criminals are detected, a situation like helplessness keeps coming to the fore. According to the police, the attackers are usually from abroad. To take action on them one has to go through a long process. During this, the help of foreign agencies also has to be taken.
In the past years, there has been success in taking action on illegal online market like Hydra Market or hawala service like Chipmixer. Despite this, Munch says, “In total, we have seized about 100 million euros in these two cases. This money came from the underworld, its customers and the tools associated with it.”
How many Cyber Attacks every week
Check Point Research (CPR), an organization that monitors the online world, has presented the figures for the first three months of 2023. According to this quarterly data, there are an average of 894 cyber attacks per week on every institution in Germany. Compared to 2022, there has been a two percent jump in this rate.
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Austria, a member of the European Union and neighboring Germany, has an average of 1,044 cyber attacks per week. Swiss organizations are also facing 914 cyber attacks per week this year.
According to cyber experts of CPR, if we talk about the whole world, between January 2023 and March 2023, there has been a 7 percent increase in cyber attacks. Online criminals are targeting most educational and research institutions.
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The cases of demanding ransom online by stealing data or corrupting the system are also increasing. One out of every 31 companies in the world is falling prey to ransomware every week. Cyber criminals are targeting African countries the most. There cyber attacks rate is 1983 attacks per week.
Cyber criminals are resorting to AI
According to CPR, very fast hackers have also started using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence tools. In a recent case, hackers prepared the code with the help of ChatGPT. According to experts, even novice online thugs can become capable of cyber attacks by coding with ChatGPT.
The investigation also revealed that the supply chain was attacked by misusing the 3CXDesktop app.