Cyber-attacks are increasing, so it’s more important than ever to protect yourself. Follow Daniel Booth’s advice to check whether you’ve been hacked
The figures are startling. In the first six months of 2022 at least 34 Russian gangs stole more than 50 million passwords from nearly 900,000 infected computers across 111 countries. Thousands of Amazon and PayPal accounts were among those hacked.
This wave of attacks continued for the rest of 2022 and has intensified in 2023. The reason for the rise is that attacks have become so easy to perform. Scammers can buy malware on the Russian dark web that launches automated attacks. Hardly any technical expertise is required.
Just as worrying is the rise of Russian ransomware. Research last year showed that nearly 75 per cent of all ransom payments went to Russian hackers. The biggest threat is posed by the LockBit gang, which in January demanded $80m (£65.7m) from Royal Mail after attacking software that prints its customs labels, disrupting international deliveries.
Of course, Russian gangs aren’t the only threat. Hackers in China, Iran and North Korea are also targeting the West, often backed secretly by the state. As the danger grows, we’ll explain how to find out whether your passwords have been stolen, and how to check for suspicious activity in your accounts.
Change your Royal Mail password
We’ll first address the fallout from the LockBit attack on the Royal Mail. After the company refused to pay the first ransom, the gang demanded a new payment of £33m and published 44GB of sensitive data online. This leak contained data relating to 200 employees, such as vaccination records, salary details and HR dismissal documents, but nothing about customers or members of the public.
That doesn’t mean the hackers don’t have this information. They might be keeping it to release later to squeeze Royal Mail into paying up. Our advice, therefore, is to change your Royal Mail username and password. Better safe than sorry.
To do this, sign in at www.royalmail. com and click My Account at the top ( 1 in our screenshot below). Now click Settings 2 , then Password 3 and type your current and new passwords in the boxes on the right 4 . While you’re signed in, you may also want to remove any payment cards you’ve saved. Click ‘Saved payment cards’ on the left, then the red ‘Manage saved payment cards’ link.
LockBit hackers are unlikely to target you individually with scam emails. Instead they’ll attack companies and organisations and threaten to leak your data. However, not all LockBit attacks result in personal d
