Police and University of Bayreuth intensify fight against cyber criminals

The head of the Bayreuth criminal investigation department „K11 – Cybercrime“, First Chief Detective Inspector Markus Hahn, emphasized the challenges in the fight against cybercriminals: "In our daily work, we observe new attack scams from cybercriminals almost every day, which are getting better and better thanks to the use of artificial intelligence. This makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish malicious e-mails from genuine e-mails, which means that we need to check them carefully and critically."

In his presentation, Ralf Stöber, Information Security Officer at the University of Bayreuth, summarized the most important information security measures and explained to the participants why email security is so important today: "The vast majority of cyberattacks on the University of Bayreuth take place via e-mail, as it is extremely difficult to penetrate a workstation computer from the outside via the network interface. So the attackers try to get you, the user, to open the door for them from the inside, for example by clicking on a malicious link or code."

The instructions for critically checking emails were provided by Detective Superintendent Theresa Schödel and Detective Superintendent Michael Kaufmann from Department K11 - Cybercrime. Theresa Schödel explained the idea of malicious e-mails: "A malicious e-mail disguises itself as a genuine e-mail and tries to persuade you to click on a malicious link, open a malicious attachment or reply. As the attackers take very different approaches and are always coming up with new scams, caution is advised." Michael Kaufmann added: "We recommend that you check every email using the 3-second check from the German Federal Office for Information Security: 1. do you know the sender? 2. do the subject and text make sense and do they match the sender? 3. are you expecting an attachment? If you are not sure after checking, it is best to ask the Information Security department at the University of Bayreuth." In addition to IT security in the workplace, the prevention officers presented current, new cybercrime phenomena and the problems they pose.

The main part of the workshop consisted of practical exercises in which each participant checked emails sent to them by the workshop lecturers on a computer in a PC pool at the University of Bayreuth under supervision. The participants all agreed that the e-mails sent to them were quite something, but thanks to the expert instruction they are now able to recognize even such well-made malicious e-mails.

Due to the great success of the workshops, further such workshops are planned for the winter semester, then also for students as a continuation of the "Safe start to the semester" series.