03.12.2024 - When the first snow falls and the Christmas holidays are just around the corner, many of us dream of visiting one of Switzerland’s famous holiday destinations. To find the right place to stay, we use a search engine or one of the popular booking sites. But there are scammers out there who want to steal your money and don’t care if they ruin your holiday. In this week’s review, we discuss recent examples of this type of scam.
02.12.2024 - The NCSC is currently receiving numerous reports of e-mails that claim to come from a debt collection agency or a health insurance company. They concern an alleged claim or reminder. Do not click on the link, as this is an attempt to distribute malware to Windows users.
26.11.2024 - The NCSC has received a growing number of reports of advertisements on social media that offer competitions or low-cost travelcards purportedly from Swiss and Liechtenstein transport companies. What may at first glance appear to be a tempting offer or a chance to win something may turn out to be a subscription or season ticket scam that could end up costing you dearly.
24.11.2024 – Since the early hours of the morning, the website of the Canton of Schwyz has been the target of an overload attack, a so-called DDoS attack. The attack is still ongoing and is currently causing the websites of various municipalities in different cantons, as well as various cantonal websites, to be unavailable. No information is currently available regarding the motivation.
19.11.2024 - Phishing using text messages has increased significantly in recent weeks. A wave of text messages demanding payment of bogus parking fines is now being followed by messages about fake parcel deliveries. Interestingly, these text messages no longer come in the standard form of an SMS, but via RCS, a protocol mainly used on Android devices, or via iMessage, Apple's text messaging service. This allows fraudsters to bypass mobile phone providers’ SMS filters.
14.11.2024 - Physical letters with MeteoSwiss as the sender are currently being sent out. The letters ask the recipients to download a new ‘Severe Weather Warning App’ via a QR code. However, malware is downloaded to the smartphone instead. This looks similar to the Alertswiss app from the Federal Office for Civil Protection on the smartphone's home screen.
12.11.2024 - Today, President Viola Amherd and Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin received Sweden’s Minister for Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin for an exchange on current security policy issues. Cybersecurity was also addressed. During the exchange with the director of NCSC, Florian Schütz, it was shown how the public administration, the private sector and researchers are working together to strengthen Switzerland's resilience to cyberthreats.
12.11.2024 - Over the past week, the NCSC has received an increasing number of reports about websites that are compromised in order to make visitors believe that the browser needs to be updated or a CAPTCHA needs to be solved. The aim is to infect website visitors' devices with malware.
08.11.2024 - At the meeting of the Digital Switzerland Advisory Board on 8 November, the National Cyberstrategy (NCS) was the focus of discussions. Under the leadership of the President of the Swiss Confederation Viola Amherd and with the participation of Federal Chancellor Viktor Rossi, representatives of the cantons, business, science and civil society took stock of cybersecurity measures and highlighted the challenges and opportunities of the current strategy.
07.11.2024 - Cyberthreats are increasing significantly: so far this year, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has received, on average, a cyberincident report every 8.5 minutes. With 34,789 cyberincidents reported to the NCSC in the first half of 2024, numbers have almost doubled compared to the same period last year. The increase is due in particular to a massive rise in fraud attempts, which at 23,104 cases account for two thirds of all reports. Most of these cases involve telephone fraud, as explained in a separate report.
