Phishing: Οι αρχές της Βόρειας Ρηνανίας-Βεστφαλίας (North Rhine-Westphalia), μιας επαρχίας στη δυτική Γερμανία, έχασαν δεκάδες εκατομμύρια ευρώ αφού δεν κατάφεραν να δημιουργήσουν μια ασφαλή ιστοσελίδα για τη διανομή χρηματοδότησης έκτακτης βοήθειας για τον Covid 19.
The money was lost after a classic cyber attack (phishing).
The cybercriminals managed to create a copy of the official website operated by the Ministry of Finance for the distribution of financial assistance due to unemployment with COVID-19.
Scammers started advertising the Phishing campaign via email, and apparently they lured quite a few users. Then they submitted requests for government aid on behalf of the actual users, but they replaced the bank account to which the money was to be sent.
The specific program lasted from mid-March until April 9, when the Ministry of Finance realized the fraud, suspended the payments και κατέβασε την by clicking here of.
Before the page went down, NRW police said they had received 576 official fraud reports for this scam, according to German new technology website Heise this week.
The German newspaper Handelsblatt Reported επίσης ότι η κυβέρνηση είχε λάβει περισσότερα από 380.000 requests για κρατική ενίσχυση λόγω του κοροναϊού, συμφωνώντας να πραγματοποιήσει πληρωμές σε 360.000 περιπτώσεις.
NRW authorities said between 3.500 and 4.000 funding applications had been submitted, German television station Tagesschau reported on Wednesday.
Payments ranged from 9.000 euros for self-employed professionals to up to 25.000 euros for companies with more than 50 employees who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
According to a rough estimate, the NRW authorities believe that they have lost from this phishing attack from 31,5 million euros up to 100 million, from money that was sent to wrong accounts.