Online Banking Trojan Stole Money From Belgians

hankwang writes "Belgian authorities uncovered an international network of online banking fraud (Google translation; Dutch original), which has been going on since 2007. The fraud targeted customers of several major banks, which used supposedly secure two-factor systems that require the customer to generate authorization codes from transaction information (random code and amount or recipient's account number) that is manually keyed into a cryptographic device (Flash demo from one of the banks; manufacturer's website). Trojan horses that were planted onto the victims' computers would generate a fake error message and request that the victim re-enter the authorization code. This way, amounts up to €4,000 were transferred to money mules and thence to Eastern Europe. The worrying part is that many cases were never reported to the police, because the bank preferred to refund the money to the victim rather than risking its reputation. The extent of this type of fraud is unknown." The article mentions in passing that similar crimes are occurring in Germany and Sweden.

Comments

Not unique to Belgium

[arivanov]

There is a similar scam doing the rounds in the UK targeting nationwide which uses a rather predictable 2-factor (the amount of money and last digits of destination account are used as a challenge).

The scam apparently asks you to "resync" your challenge device. If you do you end up sending a sum of money to a money mule.

Money-Mules

[gweihir]

I can at least attest that the search for money-mules is getting more and more aggressive and annoying here. Everybody thinking of making some easy money that way should think again. If the original target goes to the police, the money-mule will have to refund the full amount of money lost and likely will get punished. The reason is that courts typically rule that the fraudulent nature of the job was obvious and hence the money-mule is an accomplice.