By Roger A. Grimes
May 01, 2006
The Great Train Robbery of 1963 netted $69 million in today’s dollars. The largest bank heists have scored more than $80 million. But “stick-’em-up” bank robberies offer high risks and low rewards: According to the FBI, the average U.S. bank heist yields just $4,200 — and between 50 and 75 percent of perpetrators get caught. Robbing a brick-and-mortar bank seems like petty theft compared with a new breed of cybercrime that, according to a growing number of security experts, is siphoning untold millions of dollars from banks and their customers using SSL-evading Trojans and ever more refined phishing techniques.
Every anti-virus and anti-malware vendor can report thousands of bank and e-commerce-specific Trojans designed to steal money and identities, often collectively referred to as Bancos/Banker variants. Yet given the vast investment in quelling consumers’ fears about conducting business online, it’s no surprise that few sources are anxious to provide information that highlights the severity of the problem.
Although the banking officials and security officers contacted for this article refused to be quoted on the record, all of them agreed that online bank fraud is an increasing problem. One banking regulatory security auditor told InfoWorld that in some instances, online bank fraud drains as much as 2 to 5 percent from a bank’s overall revenue. Mark Sunner, CTO of e-mail security provider MessageLabs, thinks it will take “a single, high-value tipping-point event” to wake up the general public, which would then pressure public officials. “I think the world’s largest bank heist will soon be committed using malware,” he says.
OSA Editorial Comments:
Finish reading or download the report here. This article and its premise, scares me to death! The thought this is possible, has been the main driving force behind creating the long overdue and anticipated “Sign the Petition” website.
It’s time to say: “enough is enough” or scream out from the rooftops that “Were not going to Take IT Anymore!!”
We as an Internet family have to band together and force politicians, the Federal Government and International leaders to make changes in how we treat Cyber Criminals.
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Bill Wardell
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