Banker Trojans Imitate Phishing Attacks

Bankey.A and BankFake.A are the latest examples of trojans that have adopted 'phishing type' method for stealing personal data from the details of customer's bank.

These two Trojans, when in use, appear to the users like an online website of bank and the users, confidently, enter their account numbers and bank passwords. Thus, giving out their personal data to malware authors.

For complete safety and no suspicion on the part of the users, these deadly codes, after the data entry, appear with an error message, which apologizes for the error. Then, BankFake.A, takes the user's to the genuine bank's website and repeats the process, which further leaves no doubts in the mind of customers that they have been hacked.

The creators of malware received the stolen data through mail. In the last seven years (2000), the new malware's amount has increased by 25,818% every year, according to the Panda Labs. Moreover, the kind of malware used by hackers has also changed over the past few years. By accessing a template made by the Trojans, Bankey.A sends information to a Gmail account. On the other hand, BankFake.A sends data by converting into code and by using a safe SMTP connection through port 465 to make sure that no one else sees it.

According to a statement published in Help Net Security on May 31, 2007, Technical Director of Panda Labs, Luis Corrons, said that the harmful thing about these trojans is that they can be modified very easily to attack payment platforms, online casinos and various banks etc.

As compared to the typical phishing attacks, this kind of deadly codes has many merits for cyber-cheaters. Corrons explained that as there is no need to hire any service for hosting a spoofed web page, they are quite simple. There is no dependency on any external support; therefore, there are least chances of being caught.

As per the news published in Help Net Security on May 25, 2007, Corrons also reported, the hackers gain profit with their attacks of malware. With each infection comes a harmful code on user's PC, which, further, increases the chances of computer hijacking, sending spam, leaking private data, surfing various web pages for specific product etc.

Related article: Banker Trojans, the Worst Malware in Q2 2008

» SPAMfighter News - 6/11/2007