Cyberdome spots security breach in 3 banking apps

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Using banking apps is easy but not foolproof. The cyberdome of Kerala Police that already has detected security breaches in two apps have now found a third banking app ‘vulnerable’. Against this backdrop, the cyberdome is now scanning all the 56 apps that are used for banking purposes to preempt any frauds from happening. 

The first two apps have temporarily ceased their banking operations after being alerted by Kerala Police, while the third one is in the process of doing so, Cyberdome sources said.“The phone operating systems are mostly under threat due to presence of bloatwares,” said a Cyberdome source. 

Thiruvananthapuram Range IG Manoj Abraham, who is the nodal officer of cyberdome, said a gang from Jharkhand was behind the fraud and the investigation started after a few people chose to lodge complaints.
“Though a few had registered complaints, we did not limit our investigation to those cases alone,” he said.
The gang was found to be equally adept in communication skills as well as cyber crimes such as phishing where sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers are obtained by criminals masquerading as trustworthy entities.  

“Some of them are so suave that they managed to obtain the OTPs, passwords etc from the gullible public by smooth-talking as well phishing. They have the capability to do both,” Manoj said.  The primary objective of the Cyberdome is to prevent the cyber frauds.

“As soon as we noticed that there are chinks in the armour of several apps, we went in to action. We scrutinised all banking apps to see if there was any security breaches in them. We were of the opinion that prevention is better than cure,” a cyberdome source said. Manoj said they would write to the banks to enhance the safety of their apps.

“The banks , the National Paying Corporation and SBI have all been cooperative and listened to us. We will write to them when we come across other defective apps,” Manoj said.