Cybersecurity researchers from IBM have recently discovered a massive banking cyber fraud that reportedly led to the steal of millions of dollars from innocent customers living in Europe and United States. International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation says that the attack is the work of highly sophisticated hackers who could be funded by one adversary of North America.
The good news is that the team from IBM Security Trusteer’s Mobile Security identified the attack on time and halted. However, the tech giant is yet to investigate on the repercussions that are to be gained from the cyber attack.
Technically, the hackers launched the banking cyber scam by setting up a bunch of mobile device emulators to spoof actual mobile devices linked to the accounts of thousands of actual bank account holders. And as the attack was fully automated and sophisticatedly scripted, none of the victims knew that their bank account information such as usernames and passwords has been leaked to hackers.
What’s amazing about the attack is that in such operations hackers launched the attack through just 16 emulators and then compromised over 16,000 bank accounts of users. After they shut down the emulators, they wipe traces of their attack- making it difficult for the investigating agencies to get the pulse of the threat actors in real-time.
So, how to avoid such mobile frauds- Just avoid jail-breaking your phone, ensure that the operating system is updated with the latest security patches, delete the apps that are not in use, download legitimate apps only from an official play store, keep a tab of your bank account statement on a weekly basis.
