Malware Threat to Online Banking is Growing

According to Trend Micro's recently released 'Q2 2013 Security Roundup Report', online banking risks and the accessibility of refined & economically priced malware toolkits are amongst the emerging concerns. Once malicious software gets accessibility to your PC, your personal details can be easily made accessible to the hackers.

The report says that driven by ZeuS/ZBOT malware in the wild, penetration of online banking dangers is spreading globally and it is no longer restricted to certain regions. According to figures derived from cloud-based Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, the number of detected online banking fraud jumped from 37,000 in April & 39,000 in May to 71,000 in June only.

Australia with 5% victims of banking-malware was well below first-placed United States (28%) and second-placed Brazil (22%), was well ahead of traditionally-vulnerable Asian hotspots like Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and India. Germany with 2% of banking malware victims was ranked 9th while Canada with 2% filled up the top ten and France with an equal 5% placed just behind Australia.

All these figures outlined the requirement for better awareness about Internet banking security because cyber crooks have launched more varied cyber attacks that employ diverse social engineering allures, single sign-on, blogging platforms and multi-protocol services.

"We detected an Internet banking malware which changes a tainted machine hosts' file to redirect a patron of certain financial institutions to phishing websites. We also witnessed more variants of Citadel (detected as ZBOT), aiming diverse monetary service organizations. These malicious software not only strike large banks, but smaller ones as well, together with those that solely cater to Internet banking patrons. As predicted, cyber crooks carried out advances in distribution of malware and advancement of existing tools," said Dhanya Thakkar, Managing Director (India & the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), Trend Micro, as accords to a statement published by afaqs.com on August 30, 2013.

Moreover, as accords to the report, operations like 'Safe' continue to hit enterprises. And server side apps like Ruby on Rails, Plesk, and ColdFusion exploited the vulnerabilities. Social engineering hazards now target several account accessibility services like Digsby and use various blogging stages as fake steaming pages.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/4/2013