RISK MANAGEMENT
Fraud Alert
Cyber Criminals Targeting Financial Institution Employee Credentials to Conduct Wire Transfer Fraud
Recent FBI reporting indicates a new trend in which cyber criminal actors are using spam and phishing e-mails, keystroke loggers, and Remote Access Trojans( RAT) to compromise financial institution networks and obtain employee login credentials. The stolen credentials are used to initiate unauthorized wire transfers overseas, and have varied between $ 400,000 and $ 900,000. In at least one case, the actor( s) raised the wire transfer limit on the customer’ s account to allow for a larger transfer. In most of the identified wire transfer failures, the actor( s) were only unsuccessful because they entered the intended account information incorrectly.
Tradecraft
The actor( s) primarily used spam and phishing e-mails to target their victims. Once compromised, keyloggers and RATs installed on the financial institution employee’ s computer provided the actor( s) with complete access to internal networks and logins to third party systems. Variants of ZeuS malware were used to steal the employee’ s credentials in a few reported incidents.
In some instances, the actor( s) stole multiple employee credentials or administrative credentials to third party services and were able to circumvent authentication methods used by the financial institution( s) to deter fraudulent activity. This allowed the intruders to handle all aspects of a wire transaction, including the approval.
The unauthorized transactions were preceded by unauthorized logins that occurred outside of normal business hours using the stolen financial institution employees’ credentials. These logins allowed the actor( s) to obtain account transaction history, modify or learn institution specific wire transfer settings, and read manuals providing information and training on the use of US payments systems.
In at least one instance, actor( s) browsed through multiple accounts, apparently selecting the accounts with the largest balance.
Victims
Small-to-medium sized banks or credit unions have been targeted in most of the reported incidents, however, a few large banks have also been affected.
Denial of Service Attacks
In some of the incidents, before and after unauthorized transactions occurred, the bank or credit union suffered a distributed denial of service( DDoS) attack against their public Web site( s) and / or Internet Banking URL. The DDoS attacks were likely used as a distraction for bank personnel to prevent them from immediately identifying a fraudulent transaction, which in most cases is necessary to stop the wire transfer. One botnet that has been used for this type of distraction is the Dirtjumper botnet. Dirtjumper is a commercial crimeware kit that can be bought and sold on criminal forums for approximately $ 200.
Recommendations to Financial Institutions:
• Educate employees on the dangers associated with opening attachments or clicking on links in unsolicited e-mails
• Do not allow employees to access personal or work e-mails on the same computers used to initiate payments
• Do not allow employees to access the Internet freely on the same computers used to initiate payments
• Do not allow employees to access administrative accounts from home computers or laptops connected to home networks
• Ensure employees do not leave USB tokens in computers used to connect to payment systems
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