Cyber-Crimes Rising in Backdrop of Financial Crisis

According to security experts, internet scammers have invaded the Indian online market of finance to make quick money by exploiting the current global financial situation meeting an unabated crisis. Security company Symantec in a new report said that over 400 distinct phishing attacks have been waged against reputed Indian banks such as Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI among others in the recent months.

Further, according to the experts, the aggregate of phishing attacks targeted on Indian banks sharply increased particularly during September-October 2008, with most of the phishing attacks using compromised Indian .gov servers.

Apart from Symantec, Security company F-Secure too stated that the total number of fraudulent e-mails targeting Indian banks has massively increased. They pretend to provide up-to-date news pertaining to the Indian financial markets. Also, e-mails with links have shot up in number and purport giving information about how certain banks are functioning better than their competitors.

F-Secure further added that users who unknowingly click on bogus URLs could be led to a big phishing scam. According to the company, many Indian residents are getting trapped into phishing frauds because of their anxiety of losing money during transactions in the faltering markets.

Meanwhile, security experts at McAfee India stated that due to the financial crisis, a lot of Indian companies are retrenching employees, which increases risk for the organization itself particularly for the IT firms looking for job layoffs.

Nevertheless, McAfee experts think a number of these IT experts might become spammers, phishers or start committing other cyber crimes since they possess the technical skills to carry them out, and are also accustomed with their organization's security systems.

Cyber-law Expert and Supreme Court Lawyer Pavan Duggal said that in the case of a bank undergoing a crisis, a plain e-mail telling the accountholder that he needs to reset his password to protect his account could upset a user considerably. It could then prompt him to click on a URL link that might take him to a hacker's site where his money is siphoned off, as reported by Business Standard on October 24, 2008.

Related article: Cyber Child abuser Sentenced To Imprisonment

» SPAMfighter News - 11/10/2008