Security news
Security news16 September 2004
Trojan horse targets Australian online banking customers, Sophos reports
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| The IBank-A Trojan horse attempts to fool Australian surfers into entering their bank login details. |
Experts at Sophos have warned computer users about a Trojan horse that helps hackers break into the bank accounts of customers of an Australian bank.
The Troj/IBank-A Trojan horse is designed to steal information from internet customers of the National Australia Bank, which could allow hackers to break into accounts and steal substantial amounts of money.
"Once the Trojan has installed itself on a computer it lurks in the background waiting for the right moment to pounce. As soon as it sees the user is logging onto the National Australia Bank's website it grabs their account id and password and sends it to remote hackers," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "More and more virus writers, phishers and hackers are focusing their attention on internet banking customers - users who do not take care may be risking having their accounts emptied by these criminals."
Although this particular Trojan horses only targets users of an Australian bank, Sophos warns that others have been seen which affect banking customers in other parts of the world. Recent Trojan horses have attempted to defraud online bank users in Brazil and the United Kingdom.
"At the moment we have not had a significant number of sightings of this particular Trojan horse, but all computer users should be running an up-to-date anti-virus as well as protecting their PC with firewall technology. This, combined with the safe computing practice of exercising caution over what you choose to run on your computer, can dramatically reduce the risks of these kind of attacks," continued Cluley.
