Online banking attacks rise

Victoria Pennington The FDIC reports an increase in online banking attacks but industry experts say the medium is still safe to use WASHINGTON – An internal Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, leaked to The Washington Post, shows that US financial institutions reported a notable increase in online bank account fraud in 2007.

Quarterly SARs for second-quarter 2007 show that the average loss from computer intrusion-related SARs was around $30,000, up from $10,000 a year ago. Although the number of online fraud-related SARs was low at 536 when compared with the 17, 558 notices of cheque fraud, the double-digit rise suggests online criminals are employing more sophisticated technology to tap into online bank accounts.

The report indicates that in most cases, banks are at a loss to say exactly how cyber crooks are stealing the funds.

The report indicates that the 80% of the computer intrusions were classified as “unknown unauthorized access – online banking,” and that “unknown unauthorised access to online banking has risen from 10% to 63% in the past year.” The report indicates that a large share of the unknown losses were probably the result of data-stealing programs, such as Trojan horses and key-logging software, installed surreptitiously on customer PCs.