Smaller banks predisposed to phishing attacks

An American governmental financial agency has chosen to warn smaller US banks, as well as financial institutions, that they need to educate themselves on the increased risk their systems are exposed to  with regards to phishing.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) agency believes that hackers are phishing banks in a bid to increase the limits of daily withdrawals, so that accounts can be drained in just a few days.

The FFIEC said that they are trying to access online ATM control panels that dictate how much money customers are able to withdraw, as well as where money can be withdrawn from.

SC Magazine UK has pointed out that pre-paid cards are even more predisposed to such an attack.

The hackers use information held on a card obtained via other cyber criminals to make withdrawals, typically on weekends and holidays, when the monitoring carried out by banks is believed to be more limited.

The FFIEC said:

“The cash-out phase of the attack involves criminals organising simultaneous withdrawals of large amounts of cash from multiple ATMs over a short time period, usually four hours to two days.”

Banks may be the target of this particular warning, but the fact is that any business that stores sensitive data needs to have an adequate system in place to protect it. Information security recruitment will become an increasingly important aspect of running an enterprise, as long as hackers are still hell bent on finding new ways to cause trouble for businesses.