Phishing Attacks Continue to Hit Banks

Scam attacks continue to strike banks repeatedly as criminals attempt to extort account information from customers.

Australia is the seventh country in the world that hosts the largest number of phishing attacks on banks, according to EMC security unit, as per RSA's Online Fraud Report. Australianit.news published this information on May 15, 2007.

In February and March this year, U.K. financial institutions were in the second place accounting for 10% of all the entities falling victim to phishing scams, said the RSA report. Vnunet published this as news on April 14, 2007.

However, a decrease in number of attacks on U.K. institutions followed in April, after a rise in March. In U.S. also the number of attacks dropped. The decreasing trend in the U.S. began in March when the country experienced 55% of total phishing attacks against 74% in February, the RSA report showed. Vnunet published this on April 14, 2007.

Spain remained in third position accounting for 4%, while Canada and Italy were at 3%. Australia and Mexico with 2% of the attacks left behind France, Argentina and the Dominic Republic accounting for 1% each.

According to RSA banking and finance expert Geoff Noble, the institution's Anti-Fraud Command Center hunted down only those organizations that had e-Fraud Network's membership. However, the Center identified multiple phishing attacks in Australia that occurred over several financial institutions.

As ABA chief executive David Bell advised, users must be skeptical about e-mails they receive from unknown sources especially if they contain spelling mistakes or try to direct the recipient to a given link. It is recommended to ignore and delete such e-mails. Australianit.news published this in news on May 15, 2007.

The username, password and second-factor token code together may activate the Trojan for malicious action, Mr. Noble said.

A legitimate financial institution never contacts its customers for personal information over e-mail or phone. Users must not fill any form arriving in e-mail or any form that the e-mail directs to. The cunning cyber criminals may present fake forms and logos looking exactly like the real ones and use them to grab information from unwary Internet users.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 5/22/2007