Cyber Crime Increased by 127pc In 2010

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 9 – Incidents of cyber crime in the country jumped by 127 per cent last year, or the equivalent of 8,090 cases compared to 3,564 cases in 2009, CyberSecurity Malaysia announced today.

Chief executive officer, Lt. Kol (Ret.) Husin Jazri said that of all the cases reported last year, the majority involved online fraud and deception, or the equivalent of 2,212 cases.

“In 2009, only 3,564 cases were recorded by Cyber999 but that number jumped to a much higher level last year,” he told reporters after the launch of the KL GreenHat 2011 challenge at Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) here, today.

The two-day challenge was officiated by the dean of the Malaysia Institute of Information Technology (MIIT), Dr Roslan Ismail.

Husin said many cases revolved around personal attacks of a political nature, pornography, fraud and computer viruses.

“There were 419 cases of blackmail last year,” he added.

CyberSecurity Malaysia is the national cyber security specialist under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) that runs the Cyber999 Help Centre which is tasked with eradicating cyber crime.

Meanwhile, Roslan said ethical hacking represented one of the challenges at KL GreenHat 2011.

He said ethical hackers are not individuals who trespass and steal information but those who help strengthen existing systems from being hacked.

Moreover, the increase in ethical hackers allows for more far-reaching cyber security as well as a more thorough examination of computer systems, including the internet and computer applications.

Ethical hackers would be able to determine if any data was at risk of being compromised and suggest ways of overcoming such weaknesses, he added. – Bernama

Source:The Malaysian Insider,http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/cyber-crime-increased-by-127pc-in-2010/

Comment:

Refer to announcement made by CyberSecurity Malaysia (2010), the cybercrime cases was increased from 3,564 cases to 8,090 cases or 127% increased from year 2009 to 2010. We can see that the cybercrime cases were increasing in a rapid trend and I believe the figure will become larger when we take into consideration of some unrecorded cases. It’s good to see that a Cyber999 Help Centre was created by CyberSecurity Malaysia to prevent cybercrime acitivities. Sometime, people do not know what should they do when affected by cybercrime activities, so they will keep quiet and make the situation become worst. In my opinion, government can increase the public awareness of the internet security via creating some IT relevant activities like seminar, competition, briefing, and etc. For example, the challenges of KL GreenHat 2011 will be a very good opportunity to deliver the important of internet security message to public because people can get the chance to get an ideal of how the hacker conduct hacking activities and increase their awareness to prevent from hacked by someone else.