NITDA warns Nigerians of new cyber attack strategy

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has warned that cybercriminals now use telegram bots and Google forms to automate phishing.

The agency gave the warning in a statement on Friday on its official Twitter handle.

It said, “Hackers use legitimate services such as Google Forms and Telegram to obtain user data stolen during phishing attacks.

“Various ready-to-go platforms which are available on the darknet are used to manage the entire process of the phishing attack and keep financial records linked to them. Such platforms are distributed under the cybercrime-as-a-service model, which subsequently leads to more groups conducting attacks.

“Cybercriminals mainly resort to free email services to obtain data of victims (all info harvested on phishing websites is automatically sent) and gain access to the data of linked bank cards.”

Phishing is a cyber-attack that disguise email or a text message as a weapon. It tricks the email recipient to believe that the mail is for something that they need or want – a bank request, a mail from an eCommerce company, etc. Usually, emails like this ask their recipients to click on a link or download an attachment. The idea is to trick the recipient into releasing sensitive data such as credit card details, and passwords.

Once the recipient clicks on the link, the website harvests personal information from unsuspecting recipients.

In a 2020 report, Kaspersky Security Solutions reported that millions of Nigerians suffered cyber-attacks.

The report showed that over a seven-month (January to August) period, Nigeria recorded about 3.8 million cyber-attacks.