Cyber Attacks on Banks to Become Commonplace

Commonwealth Bank still does not know origin of cyber attack that hit them earlier this week according to the Brisbane Times.  In addition,Commonwealth Bank and security experts agree attacks like the one the bank experienced will only become more common in the future.

"The increased variety and volume of attacks is inevitable given cyber criminals' desire to obtain personal and confidential information, and gain access to financial accounts,'' Raymond Choo at the Australian Institute of Criminology said.

"There have been a number of cases in Australia and overseas about cyber criminals stealing funds from bank accounts by hacking into those accounts through the internet,'' Dr Choo said.

"Cyber attacks will be more targeted especially organizations in the financial services industries and their top executives will be targeted more heavily than others, with financial gain being the ultimate goal.''

CBA's NetBank woes blamed on cyber attack

NetBank woes - cyber attacks set to spread  | Chris Zappone  July 2, 2009

Commonwealth Bank says it still cannot pinpoint the source of a presumed cyber attack blamed for preventing customers from accessing their online accounts, highlighting a security risk expected to become more common in coming years.

Thousands of Commonwealth Bank's 2.5 million NetBank customers continue to be prevented from viewing accounts and carrying out transactions today, nearly a week after the bank was target of what it says was probably a denial-of-service attack by hackers.

D-O-S attacks involve flooding a computer with large volumes of malicious data, in order to knock it offline. The malicious data, now quarantined by the Commonwealth Bank, "was coming from offshore'', CBA chief information officer Michael Harte said.

"We still don't know the origin of it and why there would be such large volume,'' he said. "We're doing further forensics (on the suspicious emails) to make sure we're absolutely safe.''

Mr Harte said a suspicious spike in traffic, beginning Sunday, came amid the end-of-the-year volumes from legitimate customers, which were also higher than expected for the recently launched NetBank platform.

This morning, NetBank customers logging in were warned "that some transactions completed between 27/3 and 29/6 are not displaying on some accounts within NetBank".

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Commonwealth Bank, CBA, cyber attack, DOS