Monday, December 14, 2009

FBI - Online Bank Account Theft Rises DRAMATICALLY





Here's an interesting article published at American Banking News talking about the ongoing, (and on-growing) threat of online banking.  A threat that can easily be thwarted by sending out a PCI 2.x Certified PIN Entry Device to every online banking customer. 

Again..."It's the Stupid Typing.  If someone is going to be swiping your card details, it should be you doing the swiping.




Here's a snippet from the article:



Most of us know about the threat faced by criminals working to steal our credit card numbers, but a growing threat to our capital has grown from these cyberhackers who have figured out a number of ways to access corporate bank accounts and draw money out of them.



2009 has been an especially bad year, as the FBI has stated bank account theft has risen dramatically for the year.



They state that the banking system is actually behind the curve when it comes to defending their customers’ accounts, especially in relationship to firewalls and antivirus programs.



While big banks aren’t immune to the problem, it is by far a larger problem of small and mid-sized banks, which in many cases don’t have the security measures in place its larger competitors do. Unfortunately, this means small and mid-size businesses, who can afford it the least, suffer the most, as they tend to do business with banks that are of that size as well.



There are a number of ways the cybercriminals get access to accounts, but one of the more popular is through what is called “spear phishing.”



What is usually looked for from the hackers is for the recipient of the communication, whether it’s via instant messaging, social networking or e-mail, to click on a link which will then secretly install software which is able to identify the logging keystrokes of the computer uses, which of course ends up revealing the usernames and/or passwords used. From there the hacker has access to accounts and can siphon money from them.



Continue Reading at American Banking News

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