Financial losses suffered through cybersecurity offences rose almost a fifth in the first seven months of 2025 year on year, police revealed on Friday, despite technology crime numbers going down slightly.

Officers also warned that people are leaving more digital footprints online that made them vulnerable to cyberattacks, which had become more elaborate and posed "actual risks" to the public and business operations.

Rachel Hui, a superintendent of the force's cybersecurity and technology crime bureau, said offenders have turned to "high-value targets".

"The hackers would have much information surrounding the potential victims, then they can send phishing messages to them," she said.

"They can also apply AI or deepfake technologies easily."

"We can see quite a lot of ransomware cases where we can find traces of AI... We can find that they are using AI chatbots for negotiations for a higher [ransom] amount."

The force recorded 19,080 cases of cybercrimes in the first seven months of this year, down 0.9 percent from the same period in 2024.

Losses for the period amounted to more than HK$3.6 billion, making for a year-on-year increase of 18.4 percent.

For hacking incidents alone, monetary losses racked up to HK$39.4 million, representing a tenfold increase.

The worst case saw a financial institution suffer a HK$26 million loss.

In an ongoing operation, the force took down and cleared problematic command-and-control servers, botnets and phishing sites, while seizing over 1,500 gigabytes of data for investigation and analysis.

Among the over 39,800 cybersecurity threats recorded in the operation, around 80 percent of them involved phishing sites.

Officers requested 89 internet service providers to take remedial measures on cybersecurity loopholes.