Around one million spoofing emails are sent to government servers every month but there is little that can be done to track down whoever is behind them, according to the head of state IT security.
Jonathan Cassar, who heads information security at the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA), said government servers are constantly being flooded with emails that are not really sent by the person they are claiming to be. Nearly all are an attempt to solicit payments.
While some four million emails are delivered to government recipients on their @gov.mt accounts every month, one million are flagged as originating from spoof accounts and either sent straight to a junk folder or left undelivered.
The figure has remained fairly consistent over the past few years and generally increases whenever elections loom.
Figure generally increases whenever elections loom
Disinformation campaign
Spoof emails and fake websites masquerading as local news sites have been catapulted into the national agenda in recent weeks.
Blogger Manuel Delia, NGO Repubblika, opposition leader Bernard Grech, MP Jason Azzopardi and Prime Minister Robert Abela have all been targeted using fake email chains and spoofed websites.
However, unlike the spoofing attempts described by Cassar, the fraudulent websites in these recent cases, which mimicked news sites Newsbook, Net News, Lovin Malta, TVM and even Times of Malta, do not appear to be about making money.
Instead, they appear to have the more sinister aim of sowing doubt in the prosecution against Daphne Caruana Galizia murder suspect Yorgen Fenech and attacking the credibility of some of his most vocal critics.
This Cassar said is a different problem with more complex repercussions.
On Tuesday evening a demonstration was held outside the Office of the Prime Minister against the attempt to spread disinformation and mislead the public.
Attempts to solicit money
Cassar told Times of Malta that the vast majority of spoofed emails sent to government officials and employees will be an attempt to solicit money or get their hands on sensitive information that can be held ransom or sold on to third parties.
“It is normally about trying to make money,” he said.
“A common example is someone posing as the chief executive officer of a public entity, sending an email to one of his staff, or the chief operations officer, and requesting a payment to book flights or because they need to pay for something in particular such as gift cards.”
Over the years there have been a few incidents where payments were made to these kinds of fraudsters, Cassar said.
'Very little can be done'
Unfortunately, he added, there is very little that can be done to identify those behind the attacks.
Cassar said spoofing emails and phoney websites will bounce around different countries before finally making their way to Malta, and also make use of nonconventional browsers making it virtually impossible to track them down.
What can be done?
According to the MITA official, prevention is better than cure and urged the public to be diligent.
“It is important to confirm the source of information, by checking the address of the website. If a website is claiming to be Times of Malta, make sure it is timesofmalta.com and not .mt for example,” he said.
“Likewise, if an email is claiming to be from someone, ensure it really is from that person.”
When in doubt, Cassar said, think safety first.