More scam software to compromise bank accounts

USA Today has issued a report on the number of scam programs designated to gain access to bank accounts, stating that it has exceeded 59,000 at the end of 2008 against almost 17,000 in the beginning of the same year.

Banks generally don't disclose information related to the losses caused by unauthorized access to accounts. Nonetheless, Doug Johnson, vice president of risk management policy of American Bankers Association, highlighted that online banking was still safer than the traditional way. One of the proofs to this could be that bank customers are usually protected against losses from hacker thefts.

Still developing Internet is creating “extra comfort” for hackers. F-Secure majoring in Internet security stated it had found 59,177 unique banking Trojans, one of the latest methods of Internet bank theft, on the web at the end of 2008. Trojan programs are usually received through a viral link on a greeting card or in e-mail spam. Then they hide on the hard drive of the users’ computer to acquire user names and passwords or copy the log-on page when he logs onto a banking Web site. These malicious programs have been noted to be developing faster than anti-virus solutions by one Internet security expert.