New wave of cyberattacks on scientists recorded in Moscow

IT specialist explained why the false minister threatened the academician

Cyber ​​scammers hunting for the personal data of Russian scientists have become active again in social networks. After a recent attack on a number of employees of scientific institutes in Novosibirsk, they have now switched to Moscow. “MK” became aware of at least two fresh episodes of the “divorce” of respected academicians in the Telegram. For disobedience (scientists were required to share personal data), the fake deputy minister threatened to tear their heads off.

Recall that in March MK wrote aboutthat unknown scammers started hunting for employees of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In particular, they demanded personal data from the director of one of the institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences on behalf of the captain of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, the Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov, as well as the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Krasnikov.

The scheme by which the cybercriminals worked was as follows. First, a fake “police captain from the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs” called the victim and, under the pretext of an allegedly initiated criminal case about a database leak from the relevant ministry, tried to bring the scientist into a conversation in order to clarify his “real” personal data. After the ex-director hung up, not believing the false captain, “Minister Falkov”, or rather the one who pretended to be an official, joined the case. Working in tandem with the caller, he urged the scientist to urgently obey the “captain”, that is, to send him all the data that he asked. The next day, the criminals changed tactics: they began to write to scientists allegedly from the account of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Krasnikov.

In March, the ministry, headed by Falkov, responded very quickly to information about fraudsters, advising scientists to be on the alert “due to the increased actions of criminals.”

But at the beginning of this week, new employees, this time representing one of the capital’s chemical institutes, were targeted, probably by the former gang. Two respected academicians became victims at once. According to the TG channel “Ivory Zoo”, the scheme for extorting personal data turned out to be about the same as a month ago, only this time the intractable scientists were “built” not on behalf of the Minister of Science, but on behalf of his deputy, Petr Kucherenko. The style of “Pyotr Kucherenko” turned out to be tougher than that of his predecessors: one of the members of the academy was told: “I will come and break your head.”

– Bastards, – one of the academicians is over 70 years old. He could have had a heart attack from such treatment! Colleagues are outraged.

When I asked how the scammers could find out the personal phones of scientists, the interlocutor replied that they are often in the public domain. The fact is that there is a rule according to which the opponent of the dissertation must leave under it, next to the signature, his e-mail address and personal phone number, and the work itself is then laid out on the Internet.

We asked one of the leading Russian IT specialists, Sergey Karelov, to explain what the criminals’ intention might be.

– Personal data that cannot be found on the Internet are usually of interest to cyber scammers, says Karelov. “They pay dearly for such information. I do not think that those who call and write to scientists will later use this data themselves – most likely a two-way scheme is used here. For miners, information can bring millions of dollars, as it is sold to several addresses at once.

Sergey Karelov also reminded that one must be vigilant, since not only the personal data of academicians, but also their accounts in social networks can become an object of hunting. “I myself was recently “taken away” by the Telegram channel,” says the specialist. “Fortunately, I managed to return it within a few days, but, as it turned out, over these few days, the scammers managed to collect millions of rubles on my behalf to support certain actions or sick people.”