Allied Irish Bank Warns Customers against Rising Phishing Attacks

Given the surging attempts by cyber criminals to attack its online customers, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) has warned customers to be very careful while using online services. The Bank said that it had noticed phenomenal rise in phishing attacks in last few days.

Since the beginning of this year till April 2009, 200 hacking attempts had been made by cyber criminals to control people's online bank accounts, according to the reports. In fact, these statistics were equivalent to the overall hacking attempts made throughout 2008.

According to the security experts, cyber criminals send an e-mail pretending to have arrived from the bank to target bank customers. The text of the e-mail asks customers to click on the links to visit the bank's website. However, it takes customers to a fake website appearing as the legitimate site of the bank and asked them to fill in their bank codes.

Moreover, fraudsters are using a new attack vector called a banking Trojan to deceive bank customers.

Sean Jevens, Head of Electronic Banking, AIB, said that AIB customers faced an average of 50 malicious attacks from cyber criminals each month, as reported by Independent on Mat 9, 2009.

Giving an example, the bank's official said phishers targeted AIB customers last month (April, 2009). Customer received a fake e-mail containing title "You have 1 new security notification". The text directed the recipient to login his banking account and followed the instructions given by "AIB Customer Service".

Cyber criminals made sure that no customer would suspect the authenticity of the e-mail by giving bank's logo and a host of information about services offered by AIB, such as loans, credit cards, investments and insurance.

Meanwhile, AIB has made clear that it doesn't request for login or personal information from customers through e-mail. Thus, the bank officials have recommended to customers that they should not send their details online and avoid opening unsolicited banking e-mails. Officials also suggested that customers should use updated antivirus in their computers to reduce the possibilities of being fallen to banking Trojan.

Moreover, the bank said that it would refund the customers' money lost in phishing attack provided they themselves had not given their personal identification numbers.

Related article: ALDI Hard Drives Found to Contain Malware

» SPAMfighter News - 5/14/2009