The 21st Century Trojan War – Protecting Corporate Online Banking from Next-Generation Malware
Financial Services Technology magazine has published my new article, “The 21st Century Trojan War”. In it I talk about the new corporate banking trojan threats, and how the cyber-underground is advancing their attacks against the financial services infrastructure by infiltrating the computers of finance professionals inside corporations and government agencies.
“In 2009, organized cyber crime rings began to shift away from massive phishing attacks against consumer banking users, and instead target bigger fish – corporate banking users. The cybercriminals use advanced malicious software (malware) to attack the computers of finance professionals in companies and government agencies. If a computer that is used to access a commercial online banking services becomes infected, the attackers can effectively take over the corporate financial accounts in real time by hijacking active banking sessions, and issue commands for funds transfers.
Symantec detected over 70,000 variants of the Zeus Trojan in 2009.
Documented losses to corporate banking customers from fraudulent wire transfers initiated in the USA by next-generation malware on corporate computers have ranged from $10,000 to over $1,000,000 per incident. Much of this money was successfully transferred to ‘money mule’ accounts overseas, and was never recovered. It is far more lucrative for cyber criminals to make numerous $9000 transfers from a single corporate bank account, than to try to hijack thousands of consumer-based accounts and make small money transfers. It is also reasonable to expect that online corporate banking fraud will track historical online consumer banking fraud patterns, and will grow dramatically over the next several years.”
Read the rest of the article at: Financial Services Technology Magazine.
