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Sharp increase in cyberthreats reported

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Investment fraud caused the highest financial damage, according to the centre. © Keystone/Christian Beutler

The Swiss government’s centre for cybersecurity says the number of cyberattacks nearly doubled in the first half of this year.

The National Cybersecurity CentreExternal link said a total of 10,234 incidents were reported – almost twice as many as in the first half of 2020.

In most cases it concerned various forms of fraud, including fake support calls, classified ad fraud and promises of profits when investing in cryptocurrencies.

The reasons for the sharp increase are the introduction of a new reporting form and several large waves of attacks involving fake sextortion and phishing.

The centre said it is also striking to see the high number of cases involving so-called ransomware targeting private individuals and network storage devices.

It tripled from 32 in the first six months of 2020 to 94 cases in the current reporting period.

A fivefold increase in phishing cases in the first half of 2021 is mainly due to the higher number of reports of emails and text messages with bogus parcel notifications.

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