Threat of cyberattacks looms large in Asia

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KUALA LUMPUR: Over the last few years, large scale of Automated Teller Machine (ATM) heists have taken place in Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand. 

Elsewhere in the region, cyberattacks were launched and affected a database of 55 million voters at the Philippines Commission on Elections and the National Payment Corporation of India. 

The US$81 million (RM356 million) cyber heist at the Bangladesh Central Bank and the massive Yahoo data leaks also indicate the growing threat against cybersecurity in the region.

“Every organisation in Asia has been breached or is about to be breached. 

“There are international intruders and no statistics on which countries have been most hacked in the Asia Pacific because no countries disclosed their statistics,” said Shahmeer Amir, Veiliux Pakistan CEO and Bug Bounty Hunter who attended the conference. Another participant, Arab Bank Australia digital security evangelist Abhijitt Mukharjji said ATM compromises were happening because they were inherently running on old Windows operating systems, such as Windows XP, and it was vulnerable to hacking. 

“ATM hacking specialists 
know how to compromise ATMs to dispense all the cash stored in the cash tray.” 

Referring to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report 2017, he said 80 per cent of breaches occurred because of external factors, such as servers and user devices (Home Internet and Internet of Things).

Meanwhile, Phobos Group founder Dan Tentler said cyber attackers wanted as many targets as they could get as the Internet was borderless. 

“Targeting a different country is just targeting a different website. They don’t care where the ransom comes from, they just want to get paid.”