Zhejiang police warn: Cybercriminals use new technologies to attack with effects 100 times greater than traditional attacks

After cyber criminal gangs used technologies such as the Internet of Things , artificial intelligence, and big data to produce and sell traffic attack tools, the attack effect was more than 100 times that of traditional attacks. On May 10, the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department issued a warning to the public through the media while reporting the interim results of the "Net Clean 2019" special operation.

The cyber black industry refers to a criminal industry that uses Internet technology and network media to provide assistance for illegal and criminal activities such as hacker attacks, online pornography and gambling, online fraud, online theft, and online water army, and makes illegal profits from them.

So far, Zhejiang Province's public security organs have cleaned up 1,750 online black industry-related advertising posts, closed 8,912 online black industry exchange and transaction website columns (online groups), and dealt with 678 websites and Internet service providers for failing to implement network security measures. They have uncovered 262 criminal cases of various types of online black industry, including malicious registration of online accounts, illegal fourth-party payments, online marketing promotion, phishing website construction, Trojan horse program production, and telephone "black card" production and sales, and arrested 1,047 criminal suspects.

As network supervision measures become increasingly strict, the methods of cybercrime are also constantly upgrading. Zhejiang police have found that if Internet applications and products have loopholes or defects, they are often targeted, spread, amplified, and used in cybercrime. Criminals have further improved their crime level and efficiency by using emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and big data.

For example, some criminal gangs use network technology to crack and write program plug-ins and other interface codes to create SMS and phone bombing software, with more than 100 million attacks per day. Some criminal gangs use simple service discovery and other protocol loopholes to create and sell traffic attack tools, which are more than 100 times more effective than traditional attacks.

In addition, the anti-detection awareness of cybercrime practitioners is constantly increasing. Relevant cases show that many cybercrime practitioners will immediately take shielding measures after completing transactions with related criminals, deactivate relevant contact information, delete all communication content, and also design a pre-existing excuse of subjective "unawareness" of downstream crimes to prevent public security organs from retroactively cracking down on them.

Many criminals also hide their identities and evade crackdowns by impersonating others, setting up servers overseas, communicating through the "dark web", using virtual currency for payment, and adopting complex encryption algorithms.

Zhejiang police remind netizens to strengthen their awareness of network security protection, overcome the mentality of luck and greed, minimize the leakage of personal information in online life, refuse to visit high-risk and bad websites, and report to the public security organs as soon as possible to seek help if they are violated by illegal networks. Zhejiang police will continue to deepen the "Net Cleaning" campaign and maintain a high-pressure crackdown on online illegal and criminal activities.