Mumbai: ‘Spear Phishing’ and ‘ransom demand’ are some of the latest techniques used increasingly by hackers to defraud individuals and financial institutions.
Spear phishing is an e-mail spoofing fraud attempt that targets a specific organisation or individuals, seeking unauthorised access to confidential data. With lot of personal information about an individual easily available in
social media platforms, bankers said that fraudsters have started increasingly targeting specific individuals to siphon off their hard earned money.
They have also started installing malware on a person’s computer and then demanding ransom to remove the malware.
“The latest trend that we are seeing is that fraudsters are resorting to spear phishing, i.e., targeting a specific individual to gain confidential information. There have been instances where, fraudsters are sending email to banks requesting transfer of money into a different account. They also approach an individual directly on behalf of the bank seeking their one time transaction password,” said Mr Sunil Soni, chief information security officer,
Punjab National Bank while participating in a seminar on ‘leveraging innovative security solutions for banks and financial institutions’ organised by Security Watch India.
While spear phishing has been one of the popular techniques used by fraudsters, Vishal Salvi, senior vice-president and chief information security officer at HDFC Bank pointed out that ‘ransom demand’ is another tool that had made its way into the Indian market.
“This is a relatively new trend that is catching up in India. There have been a few instances where fraudsters have demanded ransom to uninstall the malware,” he said.
According to another banker, it’s not just monetary gains, which is driving these malware attacks. “In some cases, they are trying to prove a point. By stealing confidential information and uploading it in public domain, they are trying to prove how inefficient or weak an institution’s security system is,” added P.S. Rashtrawar, chief information security officer at Bank of Baroda.
