There's a growing class of criminals known as initial access brokers, and experts believe they are increasingly involved in cybercrime against Australians. Here's how you can try to stay one step ahead.
In some ways, the newest cybercriminals attacking Australia are a lot like real estate agents.And, like the housing market, there's plenty of money to be made.Known as initial access broker s, this emerging class of hackers use their specialist skills to break into businesses and then sell usernames and passwords — the keys, so to speak — to ransomware gangs on the dark web .The federal government now estimates digital crime is costing the economy $29 billion a year.
"By having actors that don't need to develop all the skills to carry out all the different stages of a cyber attack … it enables many, many more attacks to take place," Dr Martin says. The cost can be anywhere from $1,500 — about the same price as floor tickets to Taylor Swift — or as high as $15,000, but is usually somewhere between $2,000 and $4,000.
The research showed that between January and September last year, access brokers sold stolen credentials 1,586 times — 62 of those sales involved Australia. "We see a huge proportion of cyber attacks emanating from Russia and Russia as we know has pretty ill attitude and geopolitical stance towards the west, including countries like Australia, so they don't prosecute cybercriminals.""I think also there's a real onus on corporate Australia to ensure that they're implementing robust cybersecurity practices, and that they're also not storing customer data that they don't need," Dr Martin says.
"But it's a really important first step in ensuring the safety and integrity of your data online to make sure that you use different passwords for each of those services."How Taylor Swift faux pas sparked a chain of events that led to Bruce Lehrmann's defamation case being reopened
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