Under the global theme “Together for a More Positive Internet”', on Tuesday, 5, more than 100 countries are hosting Secure Internet Day. The date created more than fifteen years ago, is taken as a time to raise awareness of the ethical and responsible use of the Internet by organizations, companies, universities and computer end users. With the increase in the use of the Internet, there is also an increase in the number of attacks. In 2018, according to data from the Kaspersky Lab, there was a 110% increase in the number of cybercriminals who attacked the network in order to steal users’ personal information such as passwords and bank account numbers.

The most common form used by criminals is to send e-mails that direct Internet users to fake websites. In order to inform Brazil about the most different examples of crimes of this kind, the Centro de Atendimento an Incidentes de Segurança – CAIS [Security Incident Response Center] da Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa – RNP [National Education and Research Network] has been developing the  Fraud Catalog. The tool is a repository of messages classified as fraudulent and already includes more than 12 thousand samples of virtual frauds available for consultation, cataloged in several categories, such as banks and financials, e-commerce, social networks, government, among others.

To get an idea of the importance of a national fraud repository, only in the first quarter of 2018 there were more than 56 million attempts of scams and cyber attacks through malicious links according to DFNDR Lab, a laboratory specializing in virtual crimes. The numbers are equivalent to more than 26 thousand fraud attempts per day, or 620 per hour.

The Manager of CAIS/RNP, Edilson Lima, highlights the scope of the tool. “This system serves multiple audiences and is not restricted to the academic or research community. Safe internet is only possible with prevention. The Catalog exists for this reason and aims to combat such crimes. It may be in the interest of the technical, scientific public, or end user. It is a repository of e-mail scam artifacts, the famous phishing”, explains. 

The tool collects emails daily by its sensors or cases reported by the users. Each fraud goes through a process of screening that eliminates the spam (usually unwanted publicity messages) and the foreign deceits, keeping only the national frauds. From there, these messages are classified and treated for publication in the catalog.

The system has a smart search scheme that allows you to locate messages by subject, related tag or parts of the message content. In addition, it has a specific area that provides up-to-date statistics on the frauds collected - by classification, period and by type - and an area of clarification to the most common doubts.

Users can use the tool to search whether an email is fraudulent or not, or even to submit a suspicious message. “The fishing registered on the platform also serves to update security blacklists with samples of malware, and malicious IPs and URLs. Thus, we hope to provide the community with a support tool in the fight against cybercrime and the awareness in digital security”, completes Edilson.

If you want to report a suspicious message, just forward an email to phishing@cais.rnp.br.

The RNP Fraud Catalog is available on catalogodefraudes.rnp.br.