RTR CEO: – “Cybercrime is organized crime”

“The perpetrators organize the necessary mobile numbers and email addresses on the Darknet or in case of hacker attacks. And then they take action against individuals or companies,” Steinmaurer explains. It rarely concerns individual perpetrators, but mainly criminally organized groups that work together on a large scale: “Victims are often selected using random number generators. And then those affected often have to pay,” says Steinmaurer, who has gained a lot of experience at RTR.

If money is transferred, it is usually lost
With regard to Austria alone, he speaks of “thousands of cases per year”. People often download dangerous Trojans from the Internet via a link in a mass e-mail and sometimes fall victim to espionage. This can affect individuals, but also companies: “If you then transfer money after an attempt at blackmail, it is usually irretrievably lost,” says the RTR director, who also talks about a number of incidents that he personally had in the interview. experienced. .

On the other hand, some victims were lucky: a specific case of cybercrime was recently discovered by an English search team and the money transferred was refunded. “But most of the time it’s gone,” adds Steinmaurer, calling for great caution when dealing with questionable emails.

You can see many other explosive details about cybercrime and major power outages in the video above.