Economy

Identity theft dominates cyber crimes, says agency

cyber

It is deeply regretful to me that these notebooks remain missing despite numerous wide-scale searches over the last 20 years.

Online impersonation dominated cybercrimes detected by a government agency in the year to June 2016 as loss of money via fake digital transactions continues to rise.

The Kenya Computer Incident Response Team, the State agency that tracks and responds cybercrime, says impersonation accounted for 42 per cent of reported attacks.

Cyberbullying and harassment on the Internet accounted for 29 per cent of the reported events.

“The National KE-CIRT/CC detected, resolved and prevented various cyber-crimes that included:malware attacks, brute force attacks, web attacks, social media abuse and impersonation, website defacement, denial of service attacks, hacking of email accounts,” says the agency in the Communication Authority of Kenya’s annual report.

Rising Internet penetration has been a double-edged sword in Kenya as it has been accompanied by dangerous and costly cybercrimes.

The country lost an estimated Sh17 billion ($175 million) last year. Audit firm Deloitte earlier this year said it expects incidence of cybercrime to rise in Kenya this year.

Telecom firm Safaricom #ticker:SCOM last month reported a hack to its system that saw one customer lose Sh266,000.

A man was earlier this year arrested for hacking into the Kenya Revenue Authority system to allegedly siphon Sh4 billion from the taxman.