In today’s world there is nothing that you cannot find in the cyber space, even the criminal activities now take place on the virtual cloud. Cyber criminals have a huge and vast network with the help of which they perform such criminal acts.
Recently one such case has been uncovered in UK in which the online banking details were hacked. The banking details include all the information related to debit card, credit card and other related information. The police was contacted to get into the details of this crime and alert the related banks.
According to an expert it is not necessary that all information gathered will be used by the fraudsters, Let say if around 100,000 people are targeted not all will suffer losses. The authoritative bodies got hold of the entire networking system of the fraudsters and found out the information of the victims as well as the targeted banks.
The main reason described behind the UK cyber-crime is said to be the developing sector of banking there. So the question arises how do these cyber criminals get access to the information?
Well they make use of Trojan known as Zeus to get access to the personal information. Trojan infects the machines with its hidden malicious payload. People are targeted by the hackers with the help of sending/distributing Trojan through emails, links or software downloads to steal their passwords and other private information. In some cases detection of this malicious virus is not possible through the anti-virus software. Sometimes computer can even get infected by visiting a website or clicking a link.
Once the victims computer or PC gets infected with Trojan the hacker can get the control, they may even sign on to the account and draw money out. The cybercriminal then gets hold of the entire information of the customer and his banking account details. Some viruses are so sophisticated and advanced that the fraudsters can even change the destination (where money is sent) and amount of money withdrawn.
One piece of advice for all the people out there is that if they find anything suspicious or unusual with their login procedures or if they are asked to submit their personal details or passwords again on the banking website, they should be cautious as it might be possible that you are a target/victim. All the infected machines that constitute to be a network are known as botnets, these botnets are under the criminal’s full control. Zeus is the Bot that specifically is used for extracting the financial information.
[via BBC]
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