Online Bank Security Worsens
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New research has found that Banks' online security is getting worse as they rush to offer services online.
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(InfoWorld) - The web site of Bank of India, one of India's leading banks, was restored early Tuesday. The bank had closed the site on Friday after it found that the site had been hacked, and was dispensing malicious code. Sunbelt Software Inc., a provider of security software in Clearwater, Florida, had on Thursday alerted users on its blog that the bank's site had been compromised, and advised them not to visit the site. Unidentified hackers had inserted malicious code into the bank's main web page, a senior employee familiar with the situation said on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The bank's designated spokesman on this issue was not immediately available for comment. As a result, persons coming to the bank's web site were likely to be temporarily redirected to another site where Trojans and other malware were downloaded onto their computers, the employee said. The user was then brought back to the bank web-site. The bank's IT staff thought they had the situation under control Friday morning, until they found that each time they changed the index page for the web site, it was immediately replaced by the hackers. The bank then decided to bring the web site down. "The web site was hosted externally by a hosting company in the U.S.," the employee said. The bank has since changed the company hosting the service, though the employee clarified that the change in hosting provider had been on the cards even before the hacker attack. The attack on the web site did not however affect the bank's online banking operations, according to the employee. The bank's customers access online banking services through a link on the home page of the bank's web site. The online banking service is provided to users from well-protected servers hosted and monitored within the bank by Hewlett-Packard Co., the employee said. The bank is as yet not clear about the identity of the hackers, although Sunbelt suggested in its blog that it was a criminal gang, called the Russian Business Network (RBN). "We have called for the logs from the hosting provider in the U.S., and we may have some definite information then," the employee said.
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Faced with increasing threats of theft of consumer data, credit-card companies are rolling out higher security plastic.
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A security breach at TD AMERITRADE creates headaches.
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A new study from the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and America Online (AOL) paints a dire picture of the state of security in the land of the home PC.
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Internet-based assaults continue to be a major concern, according to a new report from security software maker Symantec. The time from discovery of a vulnerability to attacks exploiting that vulnerability is shrinking.
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You are the weakest link The biggest threats to the security of financial institutions' electronic systems are the mistakes that people make, according to a survey (pdf) of banks' IT security.â¦
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Cyber crime experts yesterday expressed their shock at a &quot;basic&quot; security flaw at internet bank Cahoot that could allow hackers to view private account details.
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The attorney general's request that banks send spam to warn of phishing has some befuddled.
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GADFLY ALREADY the internet age has given us 'phishing', when criminals use emails to persuade you to give them your bank details.  Now it seems we have the less crooked but nonetheless enraging online experience of 'philfing'  an acronym for 'purposely hiding what I'm looking for'.
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Net payment system Worldpay is under attack from hackers delaying transaction times for hundreds of online retailers.
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INTERNET banking users beware, there appears to be a new "phishing" method about.   The technique, which avoids most detection systems, works after you log on to an authentic site.
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NEW YORK - High-tech changes in the banking industry will soon be affecting the most mundane of financial products, the checking account.    On Oct...
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The banking industry warns customers with online accounts to guard against a new wave of sophisticated cyber-fraud.
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Northern Rock customers complain of difficulty in accessing their money in online accounts.
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Secure shopping websites have made it much more attractive for consumers to spend billions of pounds on the web.   But many shoppers are ignoring basic internet security procedures, opening themselves up to online fraud.
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(InfoWorld) - Users of online banking sites tend to bypass critical clues that the integrity of those sites may have been compromised, according to the working draft of a study released on Sunday by researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The study, which will be formally released in May at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in Oakland, California, underscores how new technologies and warnings can't completely protect Internet users fromÂ scams such as phishing. It also throws doubt on the effectiveness of site-authentication images, which have been implemented by financial institutions such as Bank of America, Vanguard Group, and ING Bank. The images, selected by the customers, are shown when a bank customer logs in from a different computer than is normally used. The study involved 67 users, with more than 90 percent under 30 years old. Because of varying parameters in the study, not all qualified to be included in the results for each of the three tests. Users were ask to conduct common online banking tasks, although precautions were taken to ensure users weren't put at risk. For the first test, HTTPS indicators -- which show that an encrypted connection is enabled -- were removed from the address bar along with the lock that appears in the bottom right corner of Internet Explorer 6. Although the absence of HTTPS indicators should be a warning, all 67 participants continued with their transactions, the study found. The researchers then conducted a test where the site-authentication image was removed along with the HTTPS indicators. The researchers wrote it is the first empirical investigation into site-authentication images. Only two of 60 people chose not to log in when the image was removed, a key sign that a site may have been tampered with or is a phishing site, the study said. Of users who were actually using their own bank account for the study, 23 of 25 continued to enter their passwords. "We find them [site-authentication images] to be ineffective," the study concludes. In the last test, researchers made it more obvious, this time replacing a password-entry page with a warning page from Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3. The page advises of a problem with the security certificate of the chosen Web site. Despite the warning, 30 of 57 users entered their passwords. The study comes as U.S. banks are beefing up their authentication technologies amid new requirements from federal regulators. In October 2005, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) mandated that U.S. banks implement stronger authentication protections by the end of last year, particularly for high-risk transactions such as sending money to a different person's account. Bank of America uses site-authentication image technology called SiteKey. Users pick an image and assign a phrase to it while also setting three "challenge" questions. If a user logs in from a computer that doesn't already have a cookie, they're asked one of the challenge questions and then to verify the image and phrase. If the image doesn't appear or the phrase is wrong, consumers shouldn't proceed. Bank of America said the image system benefits users since it's free and doesn't involve extra hardware or software.