The Cyber Security Yearbook: the number of incidents doubled in a year

The Cyber Security Yearbook: the number of incidents doubled in a year
Photo: Bret-Maria Rikko, RIA

Nearly two thirds of the cases were various phishing and scam websites, with 4,224 discovered – 2.5 times more than the year before last (Another record year we did not need, p. 8).

The Incident Response Department of RIA (CERT-EE) restricts access to malicious sites, informs web hosts about them, and shares information with its international partners. At the same time, cybercriminals are constantly creating new scam websites, so it is a good idea for everyone to keep up to date with the latest scams – by visiting itvaatlik.ee (in Estonian), for example – and to warn their family and friends.

The number of fraud cases involving losses registered by RIA increased by 14 per cent to 624 over the year. According to the Police and Border Guard Board, people in Estonia lost nearly 8 million euros to fraud last year, or an average of 22,000 euros a day. Investment fraud accounted for the majority of it – 4.8 million – and bank fraud for 2.3 million. At the end of the year, Estonian businesses were hit by a wave of invoice fraud, with the biggest losses reaching hundreds of thousands of euros (Fraudsters made off with millions, p. 28).

Cybercrime is increasingly international and organised, making it difficult to fight, but the Cyber Security Yearbook also highlights a number of success stories from the previous year. Among other cases, the Estonian police played an important role in an international police operation called PhishOFF that shut down a phishing platform with nearly a million victims (Phishers caught on the hook, p. 24). The Estonian Internal Security Service and the National Criminal Police also discovered that three Russian military intelligence officers were behind cyber attacks against Estonian government agencies (Russian intelligence ramps up cyber pressure on the West, p. 20).