Explainer-in-brief: Twitter leak shows danger of phishing is round the corner
Last year saw a rise in cyber security breaches and cyber crimes. Attempts at hacking, phishing and frauding targeted both companies and individuals. With reports emerging last week of more than 200m Twitter users’ email addresses stolen by hackers, the problem is not going away in 2023.
Experts have defined the Twitter leak as one of the most extensive they have ever seen, and have warned it’s likely to lead to a wave of phishing attempts.
Phishing takes place when cybercriminals trick people into providing sensitive information like credit card numbers and login credentials. In 2022, 39 per cent of UK businesses identified a cyber attack. For those businesses, phishing was consistently the most common threat.
The sophistication of phishing attempts is growing – so the government and regulators would be better off putting energy and resources into preventing and tracking data leaks this year.