Commonwealth Bank Falls Prey to Phishing Scam

As Commonwealth Bank warns its clients that a phishing campaign was waging attacks, the bank's Website urges its online clients to be wary of this scam entering their inboxes and seeking personal information. Securecomputing.net.au published this in news on February 7, 2008.

The bank warns that the scam using a subject head as "Your Online Banking is Restricted" pretends to come from the 'Commonwealth Bank Online Department'. Its phishing message insists that the Bank's security provision needs the recipient to provide his e-mail address via an embedded link.

In light of such regular phishing scams, the bank also alerted the federal authorities. While the e-mails' origin is not clear, it said that the messages claimed to be 'international'.

The bank, however, said that it does not e-mail customers requesting to verify, disclose or update their private banking details. It further said that if, by chance, the e-mail link is opened, the recipient should scan his PC to find out if there is a spyware, Trojan or virus on his system. Securecomputing.net.au published this on February 7, 2008.

The scam, according to the bank, involves e-mailing to its customer claiming that his online banking account is temporarily suspended following which the customer is led to another Website to update his account by providing the necessary details. The e-mail continues to say that all information would be "treated in confidence" and stored with the highest security. Recently, similar hoax e-mails were detected on December 17, 2007 and January 7, 2008.

Moreover, the e-mail communicates a warning to the bank's online customer that since it believes that some third-party was attempting to access the recipient's account, therefore, for security purposes, it was temporarily restricting his online access, and that it would continue if the recipient failed to re-confirm his membership details.

Both the security officers and banking officials agreed that fraud with online banking was a growing problem. As scammers use even more sophisticated methods, their pop-up windows and phishing messages too get sophisticated. They often carry official-looking signs and logos of legitimate organizations and a lot of identifying information picked up directly from real Websites.

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» SPAMfighter News - 2/15/2008