Police 'clean' The Internet In Bid To Halt Cybercrime

Police have completed a major operation aimed at what they described as "purifying the city's internet" following a sharp rise in on-line crime during the pandemic. The force says it identified 15 servers controlled by hackers and removed them, along with some 2,500 compromised devices.

The Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau said as people re-oriented their lives towards the internet because of Covid-19, the number of technology-related crimes jumped by 24 percent in the first ten months of this year over the same period in 2020. Officers investigated 13,163 cases, involving a total loss of HK$2.4 billion.

Given the sharp rise in offences, the bureau launched an investigation with Interpol, cyber security firms and internet providers in September to track down those responsible.

After analysing a huge amount of data, they identified 15 command-and-control servers which hackers used to control compromised devices. Nearly 2,500 "zombie computers" were pinpointed in the operation that run up to November, along with surveillance cameras, routers, printers, temperature monitors and other devices, and 1,075 phishing websites.

Compromised computers and websites were removed, with officers telling internet providers to notify the owners of some 120,000 devices believed to be vulnerable to cyber attack.

Senior superintendent Lam Cheuk-ho from the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau said cyber security attacks affected both individuals and businesses, through data leaks, disrupted operations, monetary losses and even extortion.

In one case, a company's computers were hacked for three months to mine cryptocurrencies, Lam said.

A cyber security expert who took part in the operation,Yaniv Hoffman – from Radware – said the world has seen an increase in Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attacks during the pandemic, with financial institutions and technology companies bearing the brunt.

A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to make an online service, such as a website, unavailable by flooding it with traffic from multiple sources.

Hoffman said Hong Kong’s financial sector is no exception to the rising trend in such attacks.

“We do see a surge in Hong Kong as well. You can see the graph that shows the trend on financial malicious attack on financial institutions and it’s only growing," he said.

"This is no surprise because Hong Kong is the financial hub of Asia Pacific. There is a lot of money. The major HQs are here. So definitely it’s a big target for the attackers.”

Hoffman said hackers nowadays often target Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as smart phones or home appliances like TVs and surveillance cameras. He said they take control of these devices and use them to launch further attacks, and that everyone should be vigilant.

"There is a shared responsibility, one from us as the individual to keep an update on these IoT devices. Change passwords if possible. And if not, at least update patches of security. And also for manufacturers, they need to pay much more attention, because otherwise these devices would be infected in newer forms of attacks," he said.