The government is sounding the alarm!

In late January, the Banque de France sounded the alarm over an explosion of scams involving fake banking advisers. In the first quarter of 2023, these scams cost the French about 203 million euros, the organization indicated.

This Tuesday, March 5, the government is following in the footsteps of the Banque de France through the government’s digital risk awareness platform cybermalveillance.gouv.fr in sounding the alarm against scams involving fake bank advisers.

What is a fake bank advisor scam?

A fake advisor scam involves receiving a call from a fake person. This identity theft relies on technology to change telephone numbers to trick the victim. When a call comes from a known number, it’s not very intuitive to tell that the person you’re talking to isn’t the right person.

The aim is to encourage the victim as a member of the bank staff to validate the fraudulent transfer. This entire strategy is based on technology: spoofing, which is digital identity theft. The scam may involve email addresses or IP addresses to impersonate someone else.

In recent years, scammers have also been targeting phone numbers. For government platforms, scams with fake bank advisors are real “ event of the year 2023 ». Thus, the platform’s report, published this Tuesday March 5, 2024, indicates that various forms of phishing are still the most widespread threat online, with around 1.5 million consultations on the platform.

Ransomware attacks have reached a level “ Record »

Ransomware attacks have reached “record” levels, the platform reports, noting a 78% jump in traffic for its article dedicated to this first fraud. ” They target absolutely everyone, either through phishing or through data recovered by purchasing it », explains Jérôme Notin, general director of the platform.

” Today, this is the only way (for hackers) to be able to use banking data “, estimates this manager suggesting that these scams are the work of many people” Small groups of a few people” very well organized. “We can really talk about the mafia », he adds.

The platform also indicates that nearly 2,800 requests for assistance in ransomware attacks have been recorded, or 12% more than in 2022. These are attacks that block access to an organization’s computer systems against the payment of a ransom. This type of cyber attack is especially increasing in communities (36%).