Hackers and cyber fraudsters will try to use the consequences of the global disruption of large messengers and social networks that occurred on October 4. In an interview with Lenta.ru, the Russians were warned about this by the head of the center for monitoring and responding to incidents of information security Jet CSIRT of Jet Infosystems, Alexey Malnev.
According to him, any significant news feed attracts attention from cybercriminals and becomes the reason for their activation. They use people's attention to an important topic to create or implement one of the many scenarios of social engineering. At the same time, many scammers simply did not have time to take advantage of the situation.
In addition, he warned that the lockdown could lead to the emergence of fake VPN applications and other services that would steal confidential data, allegedly solving problems with access to social networks. “These VPN apps can incentivize users to download illegal software with malicious content. And this can already lead to more serious consequences for the victim, “said Malnev.
The head of the Jet CSIRT believes that all such resources can be quickly blocked by information security services in coordination with domain registrars and search services. However, right at the moment of failure, when there is turmoil, and vigilance and reaction speed are reduced, such schemes can be extremely viable.
Earlier, the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov spoke about the impact of the disruption in the work of most of the largest social networks and messengers on the Kremlin staff. According to him, official issues in the Kremlin are resolved with the help of special government communication channels. That is why the lockdown did not affect the work of the administration of the head of state.
The disruption of the social network Facebook on October 4 was the most serious and long-lasting since 2008. Problems also affected Instagram, WhatsApp and other popular platforms. The services were restored only six hours later. A dynamic routing protocol update was blamed for the failure.
