Online banking threats on the increase

As more banks around the world refine their Internet banking offerings, the number of online banking threats are on the increase, with 125 000 new malicious programs appearing each day. The statistics also show that cyber-criminals are successful in their ventures, as they would not develop so many programs if they were not profitable.

Kaspersky Lab’s Head of Global Research and Analysis team Dmitry Bestuzhev (image: Kaspersky)

“More than 350 000 exploits are blocked every day, while many emails come with spam. The ecosystem is very diverse with a lot of different type of criminals, but the most dangerous is the end-point cybercriminal,” said Kaspersky Lab’s Head of Global Research and Analysis team Dmitry Bestuzhev.

While there are many ways in which criminals extract details from online banking customers, Bestuzhev said that the best techniques are often the oldest. “Phishing is a really old technique, but old doesn’t mean that it’s ineffective.”

“Most of spam phishing comes from financial, e-pay and banks emails(24.52%), while social networks account for 24% of phishing attacks. Attacks are transparent to the victim, as they have no idea what is going on – it’s simple but effective. You don’t need to know who to hack a website; you just need to create a fake one,” Bestuzhev explained.

But Bestuzhev has advice for online banking users, saying that they should always install updates and patches to the software programs they run, as many attacks make use of exploits in unpatched software.

“Cybercriminals exploit weak spots. Users can have strong passwords or policies, but if you don’t run patches or update, criminals will get in your machine. It doesn’t matter what antivirus you use, you will be infected if you don’t update.”

He concluded by adding that users need more protection than just an anti-virus program. “Phishing and malware is effective because of the bad habits of users no to install patches. Users need something more than just anti-virus.”

Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor