KARACHI: A senior official at the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) has revealed that cybercrime in Pakistan, including incidents of WhatsApp hacking, has surged by a staggering 35% so far in 2025.
Talking to media, Arsalaan Manzoor, Deputy Director, NCCIA, Karachi, attributed the tale of the cyber crime in Pakistan to the lack of digital literacy.
“There is almost no digital literacy in Pakistan. This allows people to share OTP [One-Time Password] received on their WhatsApp to hackers. In this backdrop, how can authorities concerned control the rising cybercrime being mostly originating from ‘South Punjab’ in the country [and beyond the borders], he said.
Manzoor said policymakers were forming policies, rules and regulations with keeping in mind those children who were born in this digital age and have been brought up with smartphones in their hands since their childhood.
On the contrary, “digital frauds are happening with people of all ages -irrespective they belong to the baby boomer generation, Gen-X or Gen-Z”.
Manzoor estimated the rate of cybercrime has spiked 35% so far in 2025 in the country.
“It may differ when the year ends in December,” he maintained.
Earlier, Visa – a world leader in digital payments – has reported that every second Pakistani has fallen victim to digital fraud, while every fifth person has faced multiple such frauds in 2024.
FIA’s former Cyber Crime Wing transformed into NCCIA
Pakistan has faced a spike in the terrible happenings ahead of the legalisation of cryptocurrency, work on rolling out a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and digitisation of the domestic economy.
According to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Annual Administration Report 2024, over 73,000 complaints were made to the agency but only 1,604 cases were registered. Moreover, nearly half of the complaints fell under the category of financial frauds.
The rise in online thefts is in contrast to a jump in the country’s rank on the global cybersecurity index (GCI) to among top 46 countries including the United States, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia in 2024 from 79th position in 2021.
Manzoor argues that the rise in crime rate has nothing to do with the boost in Pakistan’s ranking in the global cybersecurity index.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITC) has also placed Pakistan among the top 46 countries through measuring its controls over legal, technical, capacity development, skill development, and organisational advancement.
“The ranking was not measured through counting crime rate, which is on the rise due to lack of digital literacy,” he reiterated.
“Everyone has to play their role in spreading digital literacy including civil societies, schools and colleges have to update their curriculum incorporating literacy. And lawmakers and policymakers have to device policies keeping in mind people of all ages instead only for the young generation.
“NCCIA Karachi has recovered million of rupees from hackers in the year 2025, while it is difficult to do so as most of such crimes were being originating from South Punjab,” Manzoor said.
Another official at the NCCIA, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the agency has received around 29,000 complaints alone in Karachi so far this year.
The number of complaints have spiked significantly this year compared to the last year, according to the official.
“The nature of the complaints were including financial crime and crime related to harassment and nudity.”
Earlier this year, Wakefield Research conducted a survey on behalf of Visa that suggested every second person in Pakistan fell victim to online financial fraud in 2024, while one out of every five persons faced digital scams more than once.
The findings of the survey conducted in the CEMEA region (17 markets in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East) including Pakistan found “more than half of consumers in Pakistan (55%) have previously fallen for a scam (in 2024), compared with 52% in 2023. In fact, an unfortunate 20% have been victims on multiple occasions“.
In this backdrop, Umar S Khan, the country manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan at Visa, told media recently that people belonging to the Baby Boomer and Gen-X generations – i.e. born between 1946 and around 1980 – were more prone to digital financial scams, as they are not tech savvy.
How Visa is tackling a surge in online financial fraud in Pakistan
He said that artificial intelligence (AI) is now being used to create highly realistic, live-like voices – mimicking executives from well-known companies or even close relatives.
“These AI generated voices are often coupled with a fabricated sense of urgency, such as claims of being in an emergency and needing money immediately. Scammers are also leveraging this technology to craft convincing offers, like fake prize notifications – (e.g.: have won Rs30,000 in a lucky draw or you have received an Umrah ticket), prompting people to act impulsively,” he said.
This new wave of deepfake scams and voice cloning fraud represents a significant shift in how phishing attacks are executed.
Khan informed that Visa blocked attempts for financial scams worth $203 billion in 2024 around the world using its AI enabled risk and fraud management and system.
“Every month, we block 90 million attacks on our APIs and web applications across the globe – including Pakistan. We block 340 million bot attacks every month. We block 11 million phishing attempts every month that are attempted through means including email and OTPs and protect our users from revealing sensitive information,“ he said.
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