¶ … Cyber Attacks on Financial Institutions Carmalia Davis

The finance industry has continued to receive more targeted and sophisticated cyber attacks from criminals. These criminals often email phishing campaigns to customers which have remained the most successful methods of targeting financial institutions. New innovations in banking, like online and mobile banking, have continued to create new vulnerabilities for cyber thieves. To minimize the efficiency of these attacks, banks have devised improved communication and educational tools for customers, and procedures for quick interventions in the event of an actual attack. However, beyond simply creating harmful software intended to hack online bank details, criminals have found ways to subvert the software and servers owned by prestigious financial institutions to make their phishing campaigns more effective; this technique is known as infrastructure hijacking (Pettersson, 2012).

In 1998, one of the foremost examples of infrastructure hijacking ever discovered is known as The Morris worm. This worm spread to several computers that were mostly in the United States and it exploited the weaknesses found in the UNIX system which allowed it to quickly replicate itself. This worm slowed computers down to the point where they could no longer be effectively used. Robert Tapan Morris created the worm and he claimed he was only attempting to discover how vast the internet was. As a result, he was the first person in history to be convicted under the United States Computer Abuse and Fraud Act. Georgian computer networks were also hacked by unidentified foreign intruders during a period in which the country experienced hostilities with Russia. Graffiti was posted on the websites of the Georgian government. Little or no services were actually disrupted, however, the Georgian government believed these attacks were coordinated by the Russian military officials. Comment by dkamari: It Comment by dkamari: Not a place==that Comment by dkamari: Serious run-on

The FBI stated that these cybercriminals have devised new means of gaining access to the login details of banking employees by using phishing and spam emails, remote access Trojans and keystroke loggers. Attacks like these were witnessed in September 2012 when Wells Fargo and Bank of America were both compromised (Fraud Alert, 2012). According to the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre, the threat level has currently been raised from elevated to high, with reference to current reliable intelligence about potential DDoS-distributed denial-of-service attacks (United States Financial Sector has increased its Cyber Threat Level from Elevated to High, 2012). This research adopts an expository approach to give a description of cyber-attacks and compromising of data experienced in financial institutions. Comment by dkamari: said Comment by dkamari: punctuation

Cybercriminals carried out advanced offensive cyber-attacks on banks in 2014. One of the most notable cyber-attacks occurred in July, 2014, and involved a massive regional banking network that was compromised by unidentified third party, which placed the accounts of over 72, 000 customers with the risk of exposure. Investigations carried out showed that the unidentified third party could have accessed customer information, such as names, account numbers, addresses, personal identification numbers and account balances (Cordle, 2014). In a related cyber-attack a couple of weeks later involving an American bank, the biggest cybersecurity infringements occurred with more than 76 million household bank accounts and over 7 million small business bank accounts compromised. The cyber-attackers accessed the bank servers that hosted the consumer account details. As a result of the technique employed for carrying out the cyber-attack, the attack was not detected for nearly two months before the bank responded and shut down access points of more than 90 servers. The bank collaborated with crime detectives and banking regulators, with the aim of uncovering the technique used in the attack. Furthermore, the bank made sure they addressed the issues concerning the vulnerability of network systems (Glazer, 2014). Comment by dkamari: punctuation Comment by dkamari: two words Comment by dkamari: a bank is not a "they"

One unique type of cyber-attack that reduces the effectiveness of monitoring and maintaining adequate protocols for cyber security is that an attack can sometimes come from traditional methods that utilize a normal process. Thus, network system vulnerability is not quite obvious or evident to an institution in many cases. This was the situation when a well-publicized mobile payment policy was revealed and cyber criminals adopted a technique employing identity theft, instead of hacking into the payment scheme, to utilize the sign-up process of the customer to authenticate credit cards to be used on the new payment scheme (Crossman, 2015).

The cybercriminals utilized the customer's sign-in method found at the front end by accessing readily available customer details to authenticate a credit card. These criminals capitalized on the mobile payment system because most of the banks would be encouraged customers to streamline the sign-up process for credit, without asking for additional verification details to authenticate the credentials of the customer. Consequently, despite a highly secure token security system enclosed in the mobile payment policy, cybercriminals used rudimentary means to hack into customers'...

As a result, the mobile bank payment provider and the banking institutions are carrying out a review of the procedures to make sure this issue does not happen again, which includes the likelihood of using a PIN code that the bank issues to customers when new accounts are created (Paul Hastings, 2015). Comment by dkamari: plural
Another issue of grave concern to these financial institutions is the damage the cyber crimes can do to a company's reputation. Man-in-the-Browser attacks remain one of the deadliest forms of malware for online financial and banking services. A Man-in-the-Browser attack takes place when an Internet browser is affected by a malicious code. This code amends the actions carried out by the user of the affected computer and, in few cases, can initiate some actions without the user's permission. Whenever a user logs into their bank account through an infected Internet browser, this can initiate illegal transactions that can lead to online theft (Reply, 2016). Comment by dkamari: singular

While all organizations face the problem of cyber-attacks, financial institutions face the largest risks, because they hold funds and a significant amount of private data on both commercial entities and consumers. In the last couple of years, cyber thieves have utilized online banking and payment platforms to transfer of funds directly from bank accounts of financial institutions to their own private accounts, and sometimes seize the control of ATM machines and manipulate the machines to dispense cash at certain times when a recipient waiting. Kaspersky lab, the Moscow-based security company, claims that one well-orchestrated cyber-attack against financial institutions initiated late in 2013 may have led to up to $1 billion losses (Kaspersky Lab, 2015) However, according to the Identity Theft Resource Centre, the number may be higher than this, when the number of unreported data breaches are considered (Paul Hastings, 2015).

According to Websense Security Lab's recent report, the total number of attacks experienced by financial institutions is about four times higher than what is obtainable at other companies in all other sectors. Additionally, a third of every initial-stage investigation attacks are targeted at financial institutions, as reported by the company. No matter how much government officials try to protect are financial institutions, hackers will continue to steal information. Damaging the financial institutions legitimacy will ultimately harm the innocent people that use these services. Savings, retirement plans, and even college funds have been targeted by these criminals with no remorse for what harm has been done to individuals. These attacks will continue to occur and it will be up to the government strengthen their dedication to protecting their citizens in a digital age.