Australian Banks Suffering Intense Cyber Attacks

Australia's big four banks,  ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, and Westpac, are under constant cyber attack, as cyber criminals have intensify their efforts to target the banks users with a new malware specifically designed to exploit mobile phones to get access to customer accounts. 

The attackers are attempting to get into the banks' computer systems  to deny services to customers, using malicious code to breach security logins.

According to cyber security expert and regional Director for Microsoft, Troy Hunt, Australians are being cyber hit by cyber criminals at a cost of $3 billion a year. He has referred to these attacks as "warfare" and says that the pressure Australia's financial institutions was not well understood by the public.

He has also observed that for the criminals, cyber crime is considered to be much less risky than  physically robbing a bank, particularly so where the criminals are located outside Australia, in countries where they are safe from extradition.

In April, the BlackCat ransomware gang  penetrated a leading Australian law firm's network in Melbourne and succeeded in stealing four terabytes of data. Included in the data taken was local and remote company credentials, credit card information and loans data, customer documentation including identification details, insurance agreements, and internal company data.

The Australian Banking Association (ABA) which represents the banking industry, agrees with the NAB that the nation's financial institutions are effectively at war. The ABA said Australian banks were known to have some of the strongest fraud protection measures in the world but that the intensity of the cyber attacks are increasing.

The current wave of attacks on financial institutions is an echo of widespread attacks on Australian government agencies and other organisation in 2019 and 2020 which have been attribtied to Chinese hackers. 

ABC     |     Yahoo     |     Australian Cyber Security Magazine     |     Sky News   |   MPA     |     Cyber Daily

Image: Ideogram

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