Cyber ​​scammers are on the warpath against Russian scientists

“My deputy this morning received a letter in the telegram channel allegedly from me … And the photo is relevant from my own messenger,” the director of one of the institutes told the MK observer. Here is what was in the letter: “Kirill Ivanovich (name changed. – Auth.), Hello. I would like to warn you about an upcoming call from a curator from the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science. Please pay attention to the confidentiality of this conversation and ensure privacy, excluding the presence of unauthorized persons. Sincerely, Pavel Petrovich (name changed. – Auth.)”.

According to the interlocutor who got through to the editorial office, he did not send anything of the kind. These letters are the work of some scammers who have recently specialized in messages in Telegram. And they pursue very specific goals.

Here, for example, what has recently led to such “privacy with the exclusion of unauthorized persons” of the head of the department of one of the leading chemical universities in Russia. According to the telegram channel Baza, a few months ago, the “rector” himself wrote to the scientist in the messenger and said that the “curator of the university from the Ministry of Education and Science” had questions to the university staff. The conversation with him smoothly flowed into calls from the “employee of the Central Bank” and the “captain of the FSB”. According to the old scheme, they said that someone had taken loans for the head of the department, and now they need to be repaid.

It is not clear how a person with a higher education, a professor, could fall for the trick of criminals … But they say that they have their own psychological tricks, the same rule of “five“ yes ”, saying which a person will agree to everything in the future … It’s hard to believe into this until you yourself fall for the bait, but, as they say, God forbid anyone to be in the place of the deceived … According to Baza, telephone scammers managed to “kidnap” the head of the department of a chemical university, convincing him to lay low for three days. Allegedly, in this way they wanted to catch the notorious cyber scammers. And then, according to the same cunning plan of the “captain”, the professor took out a loan for 1.8 million rubles in his name and waited for the next command “from above”.

At that time, from the relatives of the head of the department, probably the same swindlers, “knocked out” 1 million rubles, but already “for the ransom of their son”, who, according to them, owed exactly that amount to his creditors and was kidnapped by them. Threats of reprisal against his son, fortunately, did not work – the relatives of the scientist did not pay a ransom for him, but turned to the police. However, it didn’t take long to look for the “missing” person, he soon returned from the “captivity” himself – alive and with a five-year loan.

Cyber ​​scammers hunting for the personal data of Russian scientists have become more active in social networks since the beginning of 2023. First, under the guise of representatives of law enforcement agencies, they “spud” employees of scientific institutes in Novosibirsk, then they switched to metropolitan scientists, moreover, they immediately encroached on respected academicians. In one case, for disobedience (scientists were required to share personal data), the fake deputy minister “Valery Falkov” threatened to rip their heads off. Working in tandem with the “captain of the Ministry of Internal Affairs”, the false minister urged the scientist to urgently obey the “captain”, that is, to send him all the data that he asked.

A little later, the scammers began to write to their victims on behalf of Falkov’s deputy, now deceased Pyotr Kucherenko. The style of “Pyotr Kucherenko” turned out to be very tough: to one of the members of the academy, who did not fall for the “wiring”, the swindler simply wrote: “I will come and break your head.”

Help “MK”. Identity theft means the illegal use of someone else’s personal data for profit. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in crimes of this kind, which is associated with an increase in the number of remote services that do not require the user’s personal presence, such as paying for purchases in online stores using bank cards or payment systems.

How do scammers get the personal phones of scientists, their positions, the names of leaders, heads of laboratories and departments?

“That’s what catches your eye,” says the director of the institute who called the editorial office. – Fraudsters clearly know who works in our organization and have mobile phone numbers of employees. Such information on cell phones with reference to the place of work, in principle, is not contained anywhere. Although…

Recalling, the scientist refers to the fact that the full name with the position and phone numbers are often in the public domain after the participation of their owner in the defense of someone’s dissertation. It turns out that each opponent is obliged to leave their imprint under it, next to the signature, and the work itself is then laid out on the Internet. There are some other clues…

“I remember that the whole institute required us to send names, surnames, positions and contact numbers to the information system of the depzdrav, where this information was requested and accumulated during the covid quarantine period,” the director of the institute notes. “Many of us have never received such data anywhere else.

By the way, in the evening the director called the editorial office again and said that ten (!) people from his institute had received “letters of happiness” from the scammers during the day.

I wonder if the relevant ministry is taking any additional steps (except for one memo on the website) to prevent this kind of fraud, because, according to the incoming information, there are already victims.

It turns out that for all the time in the relevant ministry, headed by Valery Falkov, only once promptly responded to information about fraudsters – somewhere in March, a memo to scientists who should be on the alert “due to the increased actions of cybercriminals” appeared on the agency’s website.

– There was also a mailing with instructions on information security, but it was more about the issue of saving data on the Internet. As for the letters in Telegram, there was nothing else, they explained to me at one academic institute.

To date, there is evidence of dozens of scientists who have become the object of influence of werewolf criminals, in particular, last week this was reported from the Russian Technological University MIREA, a little earlier – from the Institute of Biochemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Comment by leading Russian IT specialist Sergey Karelov:

– Personal data is something that is very expensive to pay for on the Internet. Therefore, the first thing that comes to mind when you hear about letters to scientists is that someone writes them solely for the sake of the data itself, and then simply sells them to third parties. Information about a stolen “digital identity” can bring in millions of dollars, as it is sold at several addresses at once.