UAE: Posting high-resolution photos on social media could put you at risk
Like to post quality photos on social media? Which in turn should make you step back — Posting high-resolution images may lead to identity theft, SIM swapping and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, warns UAE residents
Ashraf Koheil, regional sales director for Meta, Group-IB "If you have couple of high-res pictures on social media, conmen can find fingerprints, and they can make a digital identity or image in order to make a bank account or make a e-SIM."
The average person has multiple social media accounts, as the UAE has a nominally high level of social media proccupation, spanning across Employment sector based platforms and open interchange platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram, YouTube etc. Cybersecurity specialists caution that FRIDAY nights are being targeted by cybercriminals who know that security operations are at less than full capacity that day.
Digital identity and date of birth could be manipulated, and a crypto account could be created which could be used for money-laundering and terror-financing," he said. Koheil said that students from financially stable families tend to be more common targets as well.
SIM swapping, MITM attacks
While this might be a problem for criminals using high-res images for face recognition or deep fakes, it is not the greatest security threat, argues Andreas Hassellöf, CEO of Ombori.
The true danger is leaking personal information — such as e-mails, phone numbers, and various secret data — which can be immediately used against you. You should still practice good digital hygiene and restrain from sharing information about who you are, but the priority should be on protecting yourself against more urgent risks, such as phishing, SIM swapping and other identity theft vectors that are significantly more common and lethal today "
At the same time, Hassellöf said immediate threats such as SIM swapping, phishing, and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks are far larger and more serious dangers.
With a SIM swap scam, cybercriminals gain access to someone's phone after successfully convincing his carrier to transfer his phone number to a SIM card. In a Man In The Middle (MITM) attack, the impersonator sits between two parties and can listen or pretend to be involved in the communication.
And although face recognition is improving, we're a good ways off from people literally losing [their] identity on the street and someone else stealing their identity and using it for financial gain," Hunt says. This is a far more likely way that your bank account or identity gets hacked. In fact things like voice cloning/deep fakes are way more a threat and there are real-life cases of people being fooled/scammed for large amounts," he continued.
More attacks on Fridays
Attackers attempt to blend into high-traffic waves, Koheil explained. Example: a telecom firm is having a back to school holiday special That's when messages start to get bombarded on you. Second, they do geofencing. That is to say, for example, if you log in from a website in the UAE, you might be able to view Salik.
A person logging in from Saudi Arabia may see a local service provider, while a user in Egypt may see a different local company if they log in. They are making detecting especially challenging for technology vendors.
Koheil added that they target phishing on Friday night because they know where security operations will be sleeping over the weekend.
In the face of these challenges, security firms capable of detecting and mitigating an attack in under an hour may take as long as four hours.
"They study us too — just like we study them, Koheil said.
Multi-factor authentication
Andreas Hassellöf of Ombori pointed out that to curb the threats of SIM swapping and MITM attacks, multi-factor authentication must be implemented to add layers, using AI-driven technologies to detect manipulated images, and there would need to be tamper-proof protection through blockchain-based identity management.
"The potential for misuse of biometric data is certainly troubling, but efforts really should be directed towards much more credible and serious security threats," he said.
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