While sitting in the comfort of
your room, some internet hackers, popularly called Yahoo boys in Nigeria, are probably
sitting in the comfort of a cyber cafe prying into your privacy and using your
email to scam friends and associates. Cyber-crime is an evil act many Nigerians
might not even be aware of. But with emerging ICT trend in Nigeria, cyber-crime
is taking a scary dimension. It is indeed the emerging nightmare in the
country. Michael Oche writes.
From Nigeria’s Defence
Headquarters, to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), every Nigerian security agency is
getting increasingly worried with the emerging threat of cyber-crimes in the
country. Yet, the public is kept in the dark about how much risk is involved in
these crimes.
Many businesses are going online
and Nigerians have been encouraged to embrace mobile and internet banking,
while the government is also embracing e-payment system. But the question
remains; how safe are the users of these services?
Cyber-crimes are defined as
offences that are committed using modern telecommunication networks, such as
Internet and mobile phones. Such crimes may threaten a nation’s security and
financial health of a country. For instance, the cost of global cyber-crime is
set at US$110 billion annually.
In Nigeria, email addresses and
phones belonging to highly-placed officials, including state governors, have
been hacked, just to prove that the hackers are no respecter of status.
It is common place for banks to
send accounts information including account balance via short message service
(SMS) to mobile phones or emails. While this practice may appear convenient, it
brings to bear huge security risks, as sensitive account information can easily
get in the wild and harvested by organised criminals to conduct intelligent and
sophisticated fraud.
Check shows that Cyber-crimes are
in the increase and Nigeria is becoming prone to the emerging ugly trend. In
the past, yahoo boys gave Nigeria a bad international reputation with their
tricks of sending love messages to potential victims and later duping them of
substantial amount. But cyber-crime is a more organised crime and involves
billions of naira.
IT experts even warned that
Nigerian banks are susceptible to sophisticated attacks, where cyber criminals
circulate email scams that deceive people into believing that they are being
contacted by their banks to submit their account credentials, such as account
number, PIN number, or password.
The contents of these emails
always contain a link to a bank’s website, which has been rebadged (copied and
modified) by these criminals, often a bank’s website has embedded HTML or URL
redirected to a rogue website where people’s account credentials are used to
siphon huge sums of money from their accounts and those of other accounts that
have been compromised.
These criminals have started to
clone debit and credit cards, since most Nigerian banks now offer ATM cards,
experts also warned.
There is no gainsaying hackers are
becoming more sophisticated. And with the emergence of portable electronic
devices (PEDs) such as smartphones, iPhone, Blackberry and iPad, which can now
be used to carry out significant financial transactions, and given the ubiquity
of smartphone in Nigeria today, cyber-crime would become overwhelming if
adequate protection is not provided to ICT systems and networks in Nigerian
banks and government systems.
Last Tuesday, ahead of a planned
three-day World Cyber Conference aimed at identifying challenges associated
with cyberspace, cash-less economy, and space resources; the Defence
Headquarters declared that it is set for war against cyber-crimes in Nigeria.
The Chief of Defence
Communications, Ndubuisi Amu, told journalists in Abuja that the conference is
aimed at increasing knowledge and awareness on the latest development in
cyber-crimes and its threats to national security.
The involvement of the defence
hierarchy goes to show that indeed Nigeria is under threat of cyber-crime. And
for those who have any hesitation of how important cyber-crime is, they were
cleared of any doubt when personnel records of former and current operatives of
the State Security Service (SSS), including home addresses and names of
immediate family members, were leaked on the Internet, along with a message
threatening SSS operatives last week.
It was a big embarrassment to the
nation’s security, but it confirmed that the Nigerian security needs to be
updated in the emerging ICT trend and its security threats. Nigeria does not
have a cyber security law yet, despite several promises by the government to
pass the law.
The Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC) also said it has intensified the war against cyber-crime in
the country through the improvement of its type approval process.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the
commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah, who made the commitment at a conference on the
Regulatory Imperatives for Cybercrime and Cyber Security in Nigeria, admitted
that: “The real concern is not just with the dissemination of inaccurate or
misleading information, but above all, with malicious content. Fraud, theft and
forgery exist online just as they do offline. If users are to benefit from full
advantages of the Internet, then confidence in the infrastructure is primary
and of utmost importance.”
He also said that “cyber threats
such as malware and attacks are becoming extremely sophisticated. This is
especially true with the increased presence of organised criminal groups
online. The Internet has ceased to the domain of the technically competent.”
In the past, the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had raided cybercafes to arrest fraudsters
associated with sundry Internet crimes. Recently, the commission said it had
arrested 288 persons associated with Internet fraud.
However, experts say fighting
cyber-crimes go beyond raiding cybercafés. It requires a holistic approach.
In the last couple of days, more
Nigerians say they have had their emails hacked. Recently, the Niger State
Governor, Babaginda Aliyu, was shocked to discover that his email account had
been hacked, and used to send messages begging for assistance from many of his
contacts, proving the saying that “with the yahoo boys, there is no respect of
persons.”
The message sent from Gov. Aliyu’s
account was: “Urgent assistance.” It read:
“I didn’t tell you about our travel to Spain for a short vacation, but unfortunately, we were robbed at the hotel where we lodged along with other folks. We didn’t bring our phones here and the hotel telephone lines were disconnected during the incident. So, I have access to only e-mail.
“I didn’t tell you about our travel to Spain for a short vacation, but unfortunately, we were robbed at the hotel where we lodged along with other folks. We didn’t bring our phones here and the hotel telephone lines were disconnected during the incident. So, I have access to only e-mail.
“Please, I’m going to need some
sort of loan from you for us to relocate to another hotel close to the embassy,
and to get us another flight ticket…Please, let me know if you can help us out.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.”
Governor Aliyu denied ever sending
such a mail, and described the hackers as “unscrupulous.”
Governor Babatunde Fashola of
Lagos State was also reported to have recently alerted the public that his
phone was hacked by scammers who sent text messages to his cabinet members,
urging them to pay an amount of money into a certain Skye Bank account.
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