65 Online Banks Attacked

The latest account hijacking scam to hit online banks was sophisticated and well thought-out. And, according to WebSense, quite effective - over 65 banks and transaction platforms were targeted in the scheme, including American Express, Barclays, eBay and Discover Card.

The scam involved an email promoting the news that John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, was fighting for his lfie after suffering a heart attack. Clicking on the links in the piece led users to sites running code designed to deliver key-loggers and other credential-stealing technologies, fine-tuned to watch for credentials from over sixty financial institutions.

Our VirtualATM product would have protected every one of these customers from this attack - it was designed with these kinds of pharming/account hijacking attacks in mind and is capable of providing good protection, even if the user clicks through to the hacker site, and downloads the bad code.

By the way, I've met Australia's Prime Minister in person, and he's a nice guy, and extremely healthy. There are very few sixty-plus guys that are as fit as he is. I doubt we'll be hearing about him having a heart attack anytime soon.