• Steals passwords financial data
• Experts seek measures against Nigeria’s
vulnerability
Cyber criminals appear to have stepped
up their games, as they have unleashed
an invincible malware attacks on
Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) of
banks.

According to MailOnline, passwords and
financial data have been stolen from
more than 140 banks and other
enterprises in 40 countries using the
organisations’ own software within the
last few months.

Experts have therefore sought increased
measures against Nigeria’s
vulnerability, calling for concerted
efforts between the Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) and the financial
institutions in the country to safeguard
the operations of about 17, 398 ATMs in
the country. The ATMs carried out about
N4.9 trillion worth of transactions in
2016.

The digital strikes targeted computers
that operate ATMs, letting hackers ‘push
money out of the banks from within the
banks’. The malware hides itself in the
computer’s memory to avoid detection,
and researchers say they have no idea
who is behind it.

“It is not known who is behind the
attacks, Kaspersky Labs, who discovered
the exploit,” said. “The use of open
source exploit code, common Windows
utilities and unknown domains makes it
almost impossible to determine the
group responsible – or even whether it
is a single group or several groups
sharing the same tools,” it stated.

The U.S., France, the U.K., Ecuador and
Kenya are the top five nations affected
by the hack, with the U.S. being the
hardest hit with 21 incidents.

Other countries include Brazil, Tunisia,
Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Uganda,
Spain, Saudi Arabia, China, Congo,
Libya, Peru, Tanzania, Kazakhstan,
Ukraine and others. The hit enterprise
includes the banks, government
organisations and telecommunications
companies.

The ATM Industry Association (ATMIA)
said there are now close to three million
cash machines installed
worldwide. Accordingly, the code
invisibly collects the passwords of
system administrators so that the
attackers could remotely control the
victim’s systems.

“The ultimate goal appears to have been
access to financial processes,” said
Kaspersky Lab expert, Kurt
Baumgartner, adding, “What’s
interesting here is that these attacks are
ongoing globally against banks
themselves. The banks have not been
adequately prepared in many cases to
deal with this.”

Baumgartner went on to say that those
conducting the attacks are “pushing
money out of the banks from within the
banks” by targeting computers that
operate ATMs.

Unlike most other attacks, it drops no
malware files onto the hard drive, but
hides them in the memory. This
combined approach helps to avoid
detection by white listing technologies,
and leaves forensic investigators with
almost no artefacts or malware samples
to work with.

Speaking to The Guardian, on the issue
as it relates to Nigeria, the Chief
Operating Officer, Manna Microfinance
Bank, Tobe Nnadozie, the cyber attacks
target mostly online platforms in
Nigeria.

He stressed that banks that also try to do
short cut by running payments on plain
platforms without the security layers
are the first set of casualties this will hit.

According to him, when the cyber
fraudsters want to attack, they start
with avenues they can easily penetrate.

“Unfortunately for the industry, except
we move on time, if they are able to
hack into all these avenues, the danger
is that there may be other bank
cardholders that transact on these
unsecured layers or the expired
certificate layers and they will get their
fingers burnt.”

Nnadozie stressed the need for
continuous education, saying that due to
apathy to customer enlightenment, lack
of cohesion among the financial
institutions in Nigeria, players do their
own education separately. “This will not
work. It is the industry that will be
affected by this cyber attack, so there is
need for more cohesion in our
messages. What currently operates now
is that when bank A brings out an
advert that says customers should watch
out for this and that, bank B will not
want to bring out the same in order not
to be labelled as a copycat. This trend
has even moved to the Micro Finance
banks.”

He urged the CBN to lead the cause by
running continuous awareness
programmes in different languages on
this menace; as most people still not
know that phishing (tricking people into
disclosing their bank details) is on the
increase.

The truth about Nigeria is that apart
from the ATM cards and ATM terminals,
most other platforms are heavily prone
to fraud because people are trying to
beat the standard and in the course of
doing such they create opportunities for
fraudsters.

Nnadozie stressed that as the fraudsters
are changing their games, Nigeria too
should up the ante to fight the menace,
and called for effective legislation to
curb the trend. “The jail term should be
commensurate punishment for
offenders caught, if not, more people
will be attracted to the crime.”

To the Director-General, Delta State
Innovation Hub,

Continue reading at: https://peternewsonline..co.ke/2017/03/cybercriminals-launch-invincible.html?m=1

Invicible malware ke. This guys are mean.

Everything Is Gone Heartless in This world.