Big German banks hit by phishing attacks
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Two of Germany's biggest banks, Postbank and Deutsche Bank, were the targets of coordinated phishing attacks last week.
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(InfoWorld) - Banks and other companies switching their phone systems to VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) are making themselves vulnerable to phishing attacks for which there are currently no effective detection or prevention tools, a security researcher warned Wednesday. "People will be able to penetrate bank networks and hijack their phone lines," said an independent security researcher, known by his pseudonym The Grugq, in an interview. VOIP is becoming increasingly common as companies and operators look to the technology to help cut costs, which makes them moreÂ vulnerable to attack, he said. The Groqg, who spoke this week at the Hack In The Box Security Conference (HITB) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, saidÂ VOIP phishing attacksÂ will emerge by the end of this year. The attacks will allow hackers to steal personal data, including credit card numbers and bank account information, and there is little security managers can do to stop them. "Theoretically, you phone up your bank and the customer service line has been taken over by hackers," The Grugq said. In this scenario, the customer would be asked by the hacker to enter personal banking information before being passed on to an actual bank customer-service representative. "There's no security technology out there that companies can deploy to fix this," The Grugq said, noting that existing intrusion-detection systems are not capable of detecting when a VOIP attack takes place. During his presentation at HITB, The Groqg announced the release of alpha code for SIPhallis, a tool he wrote that allows security managers to manage SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) VOIP packets on their networks. "It gives you an interface to create and send VOIP packets; it also allows monitoring of VOIP packets," he said, adding the application can also be used to inject packets into a VOIP stream. Existing softphone or PBX software is all that is required for hackers to launch a VOIP attack, The Grugq said. HITB runs through Thursday, Sept. 21.
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Fraud losses from email phishing attacks will hit $137m globally in 2004, according to a study from research and consulting firm TowerGroup.
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Peers hear losses set to reach Â£45.7m for 2006 UK incidents of phishing scams have grown 8,000 per cent over the last two years, according to the government's financial watchdog authority. Although losses remain modest compared to other forms of financial fraud, banking security experts speaking before the House of Lords science and technology committee are concerned about the growing prevalence of scams designed to trick consumers into handing over online banking credentials.â¦
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From a sharp increase in phishing scams to high-profile arrests, here's what made news this year.
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The tricky business of thwarting online fraud Logistic and technical issues have hampered the rollout of a system designed to thwart phishing scams by UK bank Barclays.â¦
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The huge losses reported by French bank Soci?t? G?n?rale, apparently caused by a rogue trader with inside knowledge of the bank's procedures, don't necessarily point to an IT systems failure but rather to poor management of those systems, analysts say.The bank has accused 31-year-old employee Jerome Kerviel of creating a fraudulent trading position in the bank's computers that ultimately caused it to lose around ?4.9 billion ($7.3 billion).Kerviel achieved this by, among other things, misappropriating computer passwords, the bank said. It has revealed few other technical details of what caused the losses.Management of passwords, including rescinding the old passwords of employees who move to different positions within the bank, or modifying the level of access those passwords allow, is often a task given to the lowest-level IT worker."It's dull and routine 99 percent of the time, but a vital backstop," said Bob McDowall, senior analyst at the TowerGroup. Senior IT managers should conduct more frequent reviews of password policies, he said.In some cases, it may not have been the security of the passwords themselves that posed a problem, but rather the access those passwords allowed, said Ian Walden, professor of information and communications law at Queen Mary, University of London.Organizations tend to think of access as being binary in nature: you get access to it all, or you don't, Walden said. In reality, there are many more levels of access. "In modern, complicated systems, the granularity has to be much more sophisticated."To make the best use of systems with advanced access controls, the IT department must have a thorough understanding of how the business works and where there is risk.IT departments and business managers have yet to find a way to wrap security into business processes so it is not an impediment, Walden said."IT in a company is not given a sufficient status," Walden said. "What's shocking is you would have thought that the financial sector was more sophisticated than this, but it still tends to be the case that security is an add-on and a block, something you've got to live with but you don't have to like, rather than being viewed as an integral part of the business structure."Workers should be able to do their job without having to share passwords when someone goes on holiday, and the IT department should not make it harder for people to perform their duties, Walden said.In one extreme example at telecommunications company BT, one employee didn't have the right to use a computer at all, but he found it helped him do his job, Walden said."By the time he was found, he had 90 passwords of different employees," Walden said.It's possible that financial institutions could use biometric systems, such as fingerprint scanners, to provider an added layer of security, McDowall said. Those systems, however, are expensive. Also, the sometimes-finicky fingerprint scanners may not be appropriate in a frantic trading environment, McDowall said.Questions remain about how Kerviel's losses could be so high given his job as relatively low-level trader. But Kerviel's career progression in 2005 from the bank's back office to the front office -- where he would have had access to client accounts -- is also troubling since he would have gained greater knowledge on the bank's inner controls, McDowall said.As an arbitrage trader, Kerviel made money off price differences between different financial products. Soci?t? G?n?rale said Kerviel balanced real and fake trades in order to avoid setting off internal alarms.Kerviel has been described in some press reports as a computer genius. However, most attackers used unsophisticated methods for exploiting systemic vulnerabilities in applications, processes and procedures, according to the 2005 "Insider Threat Study" by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.That report notes that sophisticated tools are also used in some attacks, which would demand that internal financial systems need to be designed on a more defensive footing.Programmers should code under the assumption that a hacker or employee will use every means in order to break in, said Ben Rothke, senior security consultant at BT's International Network Services."The underlying issue is that many systems are designed to stop honest people from making mistakes, but do not take into account those with malicious intent," Rothke said.It makes insider jobs one of the toughest to defend against. The psychological profile of an insider tends to be a disgruntled employee who feels wronged by the company, according to the Insider Threat Report.That in turn can lead to a suspicious behavior such as staying late at work, which paradoxically might only signal a committed employee."It's always the insider," Rothke said. "It's often harder to steal $10,000 from a bank than $10 million."
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Anti-phishing applications, smart cards, and new authentication technologies are vying for your support.
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German banks Postbank and Deutsche Bank said that their customers had been recent victims of Internet fraud via copycat web sites.
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Phishers spoofed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation&#39;s (FDIC) Web site again Thursday and using bogus e-mails, tried to entice consumers to sign up for non-existent service that tracks
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German police have shut down an international phishing scam that may have cost victims hundreds of thousands of euros.
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In a twist, security researchers have discovered a group of hackers who are exploiting a new category of victims -- aspiring Internet scammers.A Moroccan group called &quot;Mr. Brain&quot; is offering free phishing kits on a Web site hosted in France, said Paul Mutton, Internet services developer at Netcraft, a security company in Bath, England.The software packages make it easy to quickly set up a fraudulent Web site mimicking a known brand in order to trick people into divulging credit card details or bank account numbers. Templates for spam e-mail are also included, targeting brands such as Bank of America, eBay, PayPal, and HSBC.Mr. Brain&#39;s Web site lists the kits and what kind of details each one is capable of collecting, such as usernames, passwords or Social Security numbers. Netcraft posted screenshots on its Web site.But what the aspiring scammer doesn&#39;t know is that the phishing kits are designed to send any sensitive information that&#39;s collected back to e-mail accounts controlled by Mr. Brain, Mutton said.&quot;Obviously, that&#39;s why they are offering this stuff for free,&quot; Mutton said. &quot;I was impressed by it.&quot;Mr. Brain hides the special e-mail function in a blend of PHP scripts, one of which is encrypted, Mutton said. Just in case someone decrypts it, Mr. Brain has written at the top of the file &quot;Don&#39;t need to change anything here. Created by Mr. Brain Morocco Team.&quot;The scheme seems to be targeted at new phishers, Mutton said. Mr. Brain benefits since other wannabe scammers shoulder the cost and risk of finding an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to host the phishing site, Mutton said.&quot;Essentially, they&#39;re exploiting all these novice phishers -- basically getting them to do all the hard work,&quot; Mutton said.It&#39;s difficult to tell without further research how many of the free phishing kits linked with this latest scam are live on the Internet, but Mutton said Netcraft noticed one earlier this month targeting Bank of America.&quot;Clearly, these are actively being used in phishing attacks,&quot; Mutton said.
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A Google Maps mashup that pinpoints the physical location of affected IP addresses is just one component of an elaborate phishing scam designed to separate bank customers from their money. The scam targets account holders at firms including Bank of America, Germany's Deutsche Bank, and Australia's Westpac and Commonwealth Bank.
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Internet "phishing" scams are  becoming more difficult to detect as criminals develop new ways  to trick consumers into revealing passwords, bank account  numbers and other sensitive information, security experts say.
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Victims in Australia, Germany, and the U.S. are being targeted by a phishing scam that reveals their location using Google Maps.
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NatWest bank suspends some online banking facilities after bogus e-mails ask customers for their account details in a 'phishing' scam.
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Irish banks unite Irish banks have responded to internet scams such as phishing by setting up a forum to share information on high-tech crime.â¦