Over 780 New Malicious Programs Focus Internet Banking Everyday: Kaspersky

Kaspersky Lab the security company claims that everyday over 780 fresh malicious programs get added to the total malware count to steal highly secret financial information or 1.1% of all malicious programs detected daily are financial data-stealing programs.

The company detected that a mean of 2,000 individual computers daily during November 2011-January 2012 were infected with banker Trojans.

Importantly Kaspersky experts, during January 2012, found Trojan-Banker.MSIL.MultiPhishing.gen that seized bank account particulars belonging to many accountholders of banks such as HSBC Bank UK, Bank of Scotland, Santander, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, and Metro Bank.

The Trojan, when installed, hangs around till an Internet-banking session begins on the system. Thereafter, it creates one window, which mimics a validation form associated with the related banking institution. Amazingly it, by verifying the entered data's precision, ensures that there's no mistake in the account-accessing credentials. Incidentally, Trojan-Banker.MSIL.MultiPhishing.gen chiefly attacks British users, but simultaneously, impacts all parts of the world too.

Consequently, it enables fraudsters to acquire confidential banking information with which they can gain spurious entry into the accounts of those victimized. And while chiefly targeting British accountholders, around 90% of identifications by AV software have been recorded in UK.

Furthermore, as banker-Trojans impact nearly all parts of the world, Brazil with 16.9% of infections is the most attacked nation followed with Russia at 15.8% and China at 10.8%.

Overall, Kaspersky Lab reiterated consumers to maintain greatest caution when handling personal information as well as to be very careful with e-forms, which direct to fill up such information.

Finally, hackers keep on discovering fresh tactics everyday for dealing with the latest security devices related to Internet banking. Currently, the "upgraded security mechanism" represents one highly popular system. A related scam is called MitB (Man-in-the-Browser) assault wherein malware is used to dupe end-users into downloading activities simultaneous of their occurrences, into their Web-browsers, and also to be an intermediary between the banking site and the consumer, changing information being input as also whatever is visible.

Conclusively, specialists suggest consumers never to click web-links within e-mails posing as messages from their banks, nor reveal passwords or other personal details over e-mail.

Related article: Opera 9.1 Browser Introduces phishing Alert

» SPAMfighter News - 2/11/2012