Cyber fraudsters target new sectors beyond financial transaction
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 25 August 2010, 15:33 IST   |    2 Comments
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Cyber fraudsters target new sectors beyond financial transaction
Bangalore: Cyber fraudsters seem to be thinking beyond financial transaction related verticals and cyber crime has evolved as an organized crime today. Cyber criminals are developing fixed strategies to capitalize on particular trends in a particular geography like sports, entertainment and telecom in India, reports N. Vasudevan and Thanuja B. M. from Financial Chronicle. The ICC 2011 cricket World Cup begins in February 2011 in the subcontinent, and phishing websites promoting the tournament have already been observed by Symantec. A phishing site claims that users can get tickets to the matches by entering their login credentials of a popular social networking site that the phishing site has spoofed. Symantec also observed similar phishing websites during FIFA World Cup that tried to steal login credentials of users by promising to sell memorabilia of World Cup. Sanjay Bahl, Chief Security Officer of Microsoft India said, "By using events related to sports and entertainment, cybercriminals play on a person's fear, trust and desire. Cyber attacks globally are primarily driven and motivated by financial gains." In addition to spam mails with links promising to show some graphical content of celebrities, the other key trend noticed by Symantec is spoof websites of popular social networking brands promising fake offers for free online mobile phone top-ups to capitalize on the huge number of prepaid mobile users in India. "Major news stories like IPL cricket, FIFA World Cup and now the Commonwealth Games seem to result in a spike in theme-related malware attacks strategically designed for a greater return on investment," said Shafi Shanavas, Director of Product Management, PC Tools. According to data from CERT India and cyber crime cells, 2009 saw 375 cases of phishing incidents, 6,500 malware and fraudulent websites and 3.5 million bot infected systems in the country. Bot is a type of malware that allows an attacker to take control over an affected computer. Shantanu Ghosh, vice-president, India Product Operations at Symantec, said, "Cyber crime has now become very organised. Earlier, only the techies were involved in this. But, now-a-days there are non-techie criminal gangs, who hire techies to write malwares. Also, there are automated tool kits available to develop phishing sites and write malwares." According to the latest report by Symantec, India ranks at No.2 in terms of spam originations, contributing 6 percent to the global spam levels. In June, Symantec found the phishing websites created by automated tool kits doubled with an increase of 123 percent from May. "Spamming is becoming very specialised. First part is stealing email addresses and second part is social engineering, that is, working on human greed and curiosity and make the user click on something," Ghosh said.

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