The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has raised an alarm over activities of cyber-criminals taking advantage of the current “COVID-19” pandemic to defraud citizens, steal sensitive information, or gain unauthorized access to computers or mobile devices using various techniques.
Alerting the general public about the development, CBN Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, said in a statement on Sunday that the trend was not peculiar to Nigeria as there has been a rise in COVID-19-related cyber- criminal activities all over the world.
In the statement titled: ‘Alert! Beware of COVID-19 Cyber-attacks, Fraud’, Okorafor said; “Our priority is to ensure that Nigerian banking customers are aware of the ongoing trend to prevent them from falling victim to such cyber- crimes.”
He identified one of the cyber-criminal activities using the COVID-19 pandemic as Phishing campaigns where cyber-criminals send out emails claiming to be from health organizations such as the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO). The email may contain a link which, if clicked, steals login credentials or other confidential information from the victim’s computer or mobile device.
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He also said cyber-criminals have been sending messages via social media or emails asking people to click on links to register in order to get their COVID-19 relief packages from the Government or other organisations. They simply use this to get confidential information from unwary victims.
The CBN official disclosed further that relief package scams come also in the form of phone calls asking people to provide their banking details to receive relief packages.
“Cyber-criminals place calls to individuals claiming to be staff of their banks and asking them to get mobile apps that would help them get through this pandemic period. Such mobile apps are however used to steal information from the victims’ mobile phones among other things. Criminals have also produced COVID-19 maps, which steal information in the background,” he added.
