The Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service has cautioned state agencies, financial institutions and other private entities to strengthen their cyberspace to curb increasing attacks and infiltration.
The call follows a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States of America which indicates that over eighty top Ghanaian companies had their login credentials sold out to criminals.
According to the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ghana Police, the United States FBI is currently investigating “the dark web market place” which is being used as a conduit to perpetuate the act.
The Head of the Cyber Crime Unit, ACP Dr. Gustav Yankson urged companies to fortify their IT systems against such attacks.
“Words like 1,2,3,4, normal figures, names, word password; these were passwords we saw in that report and it is very worrying because these are weak passwords. Very strong passwords must be Alphanumeric with special characters,” he said.
It has emerged that 86 Ghanaian top companies have had their login credentials sold out to criminals between October 2014 and January 2019.
The affected institutions include financial institutions such as banks, the telecoms sector, IT companies and even state institutions.
According to Dr Gustav Herbert Yankson, some criminals are hacking into sensitive systems with ease and are getting access to sensitive data of those institutions.
FBI report indicated that Remote Desk Top Protocol (RDP) access credentials of the affected companies are being compromised in a rampant manner.
