KOCHI: If you thought servers of banks were impervious to hacking, get ready to be surprised. While banks normally try to shirk any responsibility in incidents of cyber frauds, saying the security breach may have occurred at the customers’ end and that their servers are “protected by firewall”, cyber experts say even their servers are vulnerable to hacking. They say fraudsters are known to use online banking links to deliver ‘Trojans’ (a type of malware) for collecting the details of account holders.
“Phishing attacks are very common these days for obtaining the customers’ credentials through social engineering,” says a police officer handling cyber crimes.
According to officers, ‘Trojans’ are planted and enter the computers of users when the devices are connected to the internet. They keep running in the background without the users’ knowledge and can steal identification credentials of users, including passwords. ‘Trojans’ can be easily sent to a computer in various forms, says Manu P Zacharia, cyber security expert and a member of the Data Security Council of India.
“Fraudsters use emails, WhatsApp messages and online games to plant a ‘Trojan’ on a computer or a mobile phone. Even servers of the banks are used to deliver ‘Trojans’ in the computers of the account holders. Though the bank servers and computers are protected by anti-virus and firewall, hackers find new ways to breach them and plant malware,” says Manu.
A network of frauds exposed
In its detailed probe into the incident in which Dr Shabbir Khan of Lakeshore Hospital lost over `11 lakh in fraudulent transactions in 2012, the city police managed to expose a well-organised pan-India network of fraudsters who were behind the crime. Police filed a chargesheet against 11 accused before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court, Ernakulam, for committing various offences in connection with the fraudulent transfers of money from the doctor’s account.
“All the accused were from other states,” said an officer. The main accused was a Nigeria native, Felix Ivdubuisi Egedigave, who stayed in Puducherry and used several persons from Hyderabad and Kolkata to commit the crime.