Comments on: New Bank Trojan Virus Steals Money

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:38:52 +0000

Too bad so many brilliant people turn out to be crooks.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:11:38 +0000

These are floating around in Facebook now. Beware!

By: John DeFlumeri Jr

John DeFlumeri Jr — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:36:20 +0000

That’s the worse thing I ever heard of!

By: Julio

Julio — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:49:17 +0000

I reduce my exposure to these types of attacks by doing all online banking from a computer that I have designated for banking tasks only. I also have an email ‘alias’ that I use only for online banking. It’s an old computer running an old OS and therefore is not a target of many these type of attacks to begin with. All other computing, internet surfing and gaming is done from a newer computer more suited for these tasks.

By: JD

JD — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:03:09 +0000

I agree with this. Not to sound ignorant however, People complain about Mac’s overpriced system all the time, but with threats like this that only affect windows, I’m glad I purchased one.

By: Ellen / MoneyLounge

Ellen / MoneyLounge — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:43:04 +0000

I have always been a fan of online banking, but as with any convenience it can open you up to more vulnerability. I don’t doubt that someone out there is capable of this, and it would be a nightmare to recover from. I haven’t yet heard of anyone who has had a problem with this before, but be careful!

By: KKovacs

KKovacs — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:54:17 +0000

I don’t think logging in with another software and comparing the amount would help; that’s after the fact… You have already logged in from the infected browser.

By: Modder

Modder — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:04:25 +0000

This *specific* scam is not a threat for us in the US. It relies on the fact that German / European banks allow wire transfers from account to account. E.g. if I know your account #, I can wire you a certain amount of money. This is very easy to do online, clearly an easy way for criminals to clear out accounts. In the US, sending money “out” of an account electronically is much more difficult. Outgoing wire transfers are typically never enabled online (need to fill out forms etc), only way I can think of is online bill pay via checks which takes a lot longer and is harder to cover up. Plus you can cancel issued checks once you notice the scam.

But in general, the trick here is to monitor your accounts from multiple computers. My wife and I both have home and work computers. We each check out accounts daily, often using both computers. So if there is any funny business going on, and one of the computers is compromised, we would likely notice from another computer.

By: KK

KK — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:00:17 +0000

i just visited the Finjan website and read their version of the article. It is clearly an advertisement to sell their products but written to be disguised as NEWS. i doubt any of it is true. they are trying to scare people to make a buck.

By: KK

KK — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:48:55 +0000

this article does not seem credible. in order to transfer money online, you have to set up the link in advance, wait for trial deposits, verify the amount of the deposits and not before can money leave your bank to go a virus hackers bank. It says you get an email and have to clck a link. It is obviously simple phishing. just watch the url and make sure it is the url for your bank.

By: daemondust

daemondust — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:25:38 +0000

This might actually be a place where storing your banking password is actually more secure since it circumvents some of the vectors (keystroke logging) this would use to grab your password.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:19:17 +0000

You would have to marry up the data shown in Mint/Quicken/Wesabe/etc. with your displayed account balance to ensure the number shown when you “logged in,” under the influence of this trojan, was correct. I don’t see anyone doing this every single time to ensure correctness.

By: Michael Harr @ TodayForward

Michael Harr @ TodayForward — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:05:37 +0000

These criminals are GENIUS!

As for protecting yourself, why not use Mint/Quicken, Wesabe, Thrive, et al. to monitor balances and transactions? Since this trojan is setup to replicate financial institutions’ websites, using a third party account aggregator would give a second source of data that the criminals are not targeting for the fake balance in the browser. Also, for Mint and Wesabe users, you can grab your balances through your phone instead of your regular computer. Just a thought.

By: eric

eric — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:47:14 +0000

All I can say: thank god for Macs.

By: Yana

Yana — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:40:49 +0000

I think the best you can do to prevent this is to be aware and proactive about what goes into your browser, including which cookies you allow. You can set most browsers to ask you before allowing individual cookies, and once you choose to allow it/disallow it permanently, you’re done. Over time, you can determine which cookies you have to have to enjoy good sites, and which are tracking cookies and not necessary. Also set the browser to delete non-critical (or all) cookies and clear the cache after each session.

If you use Firefox, you can avail yourself of this – http://noscript.net/ – which I use with SeaMonkey. I only just discovered it a few months ago, and I love it. It is extra security, because a website can’t even load everything or run scripts without your express permission. It makes me feel safer.

I also really like SeaMonkey’s mail program and especially “Composer” – the built-in text editor. I have a cheap and annoying printer, and always have trouble getting it to print right, but with Composer, it prints absolutely beautifully. These things and NoScript got me to switch from Opera, with the added plus that SeaMonkey works on more sites – such as Facebook