Radio Jamaica News published an article on January 8th, 2020 about a Heightened risk of cyber-attacks in Jamaica as alerted by the Jamaican National Group Cybersecurity Unit.
The Jamaican National Group Cyber Unit published an alert for their members and customers to be vigilant and exercise caution when using online banking services and email communications.
Key points:
- Customers reported to the JN Group that they have been receiving calls and text messages from area codes tied to a West African country, Benin containing links to forms requesting personal information on behalf of the JN Bank and The Jamaican National Group.
- The bank is urging its customers to not respond to these requests nor submit any personal information, including account information and passwords through forms received through emails, text messages, or phone calls.
- They also further stated that there is a heightened risk of cyber-attacks from hackers associated with the Iranian government, which has a history of launching cyber-attacks against U.S. based financial services.
- The Iranian government has vowed to retaliate against the United States in response to an attack that took the life of an Iranian General.
- Iran has had a history of launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against several major U.S. banks.
- Further claims from the U.S. government published in 2018 revealed an increase in malicious cyber activity targeting U.S. government agencies originating from Iranian attackers that intended to cause disruption and destruction to computer data.
Reference: radiojamaicanewsonline.com
Contributed by: Jason Jacobs from Guyana. Jason is a member of the CCST Discord group from the G5 Cyber Security Foundation Ltd. Learn more about CCST (Caribbean Cyber Support Team) by visiting caribbeancst.org. CCST is a collaborative group on the Discord platform for Caribbean people in IT, from beginners to experts.