Banks Facing High Security Risk
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Aug 7, 2007

The number of hackers has increased over the years, as more and more criminals realize the easy money that can be made from it and the minimal risk they face. This fact is further corroborated by Allen Wilson, vice president (Research) of SecureWorks, who states, "The attacks were blocked from approximately 808 hackers during June 2006 to December 2006. However, the number of hackers launching attacks at each of banks has increased to 1,462 since the beginning of 2007 up till June. For credit unions, the attacks were blocked from 1,110 hackers per credit union per month, but the number has risen to 1,799 hackers per credit union per month."

SecureWorks - an information security services provider - has announced that the number of hackers attempting to attack its banking clients has increased to 81% since last year, and hackers attempting to attack its credit union clients around 62%. SecureWorks, however, has claimed to block 167 million hacker attacks in the last 30 days. Most of these hackers, according to Wilson, are located in Russia and Eastern Europe, and China. The reason for this is that these countries have number of talented young people who're computer literate. Besides, challenging socioeconomic conditions, along with a lack of computer crime legislation, makes the allure of committing low risk, fraud-related crimes against victims on the other side of the world an appealing choice.

According to Don Jackson, security researcher of SecureWorks and the discoverer of the Gozi and Prg Trojans, the stolen financial data caches comprise thousands of bank account and credit card numbers, social security numbers, online payment accounts, and user names and passwords. New caches of stolen data are found on regular basis, which again provide evidence that more and more criminals are getting into the game.

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