BUSINESS NEWS
Bank calms internet fraud fears
Posted Thu, 06 Jul 2006
"Some money" was taken from Standard Bank clients when fraudsters hacked the bank's accounts, group spokesperson Ross Linstrom said on Wednesday.
"There has been some money (taken) but very little. That is not our concern. Our concern is tightening up (security). In terms of people, it is less than ten," Linstrom said.
He said these were isolated incidents.
Standard Bank's director of architecture and technology engineering, said: "There is no evidence of an organised syndicate being involved in these incidents."
Said Herman Singh, Director Architecture and Technology Engineering: "There is no evidence of an organised syndicate being involved in these incidents. At this stage of our investigations it would seem that the customer's personal credentials have been compromised to somebody that they may know. Customers should be vigilant, and not share their personal credentials with anybody, be this wittingly or unwittingly."
However, Linstrom confirmed that
several customers had reported suspicious prepaid transfers on their accounts and funds were transferred to a prepaid cellphone account.
"A Standard Bank Internet security team physically examined several customers' computers and found no malicious software," he said, adding the probe into the incidents was "ongoing".
On Tuesday the Cape Times reported that fraudsters hacked into the accounts of clients of all three major banks.
The newspaper's website said fraudsters had in the past three months gained access to the online accounts of First National Bank, Standard and Absa bank clients, stealing thousands of rands.
The fraudsters had found a way of hacking into personal or business accounts and then transferring money from these accounts to either cellphone or Telkom prepaid accounts.
All three banks confirmed on Monday that their systems had been breached.
Last week a fraudster hacked into the account of Boaz Chilala, a First National Bank
(FNB) client and swiped R10 500.
FNB declined to say whether the money taken from Chilala's bank account had been transferred into a cellphone prepaid account.
Chris Kotze, spokesperson for FNB Online, said Chilala would be reimbursed.
FNB and Absa bank officials could not immediately respond to queries on the matter.
Standard Bank has meanwhile urged customers to adopt One Time Password as a means to protect themselves against unauthorised access of their accounts by third parties.
The One Time Password facility was introduced by the bank last year and is a two factor authentication methodology, whereby the delivery of a second password occurs independently of the internet banking session a client uses. Over 200 000 customers out of 500 000 internet banking customers have already adopted the security service.
The second password is system generated and delivered to the client's cellphone via SMS or email address.
Sapa
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