News If all your phones begin to ring off their hooks, there is a chance cybercriminals are in the final stages of fleecing you. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recently warned of a new scam technique in the US that could soon be used in Australia.
The scam involves a victim’s various phones (work, home, mobile, etc) being bombarded by a ‘denial-of-service’ attack. As the victim scrambles to uncover the phone problem, cyber criminals are using stolen password and account information to access their prey’s bank accounts online. What makes this new technique so sneaky is that neither the victim nor the financial institution involved can contact each other during the robbery.
The scam works like this:
1. The scam begins by a criminal attempting to elicit personal information from a victim. Phishing emails or malware may be used to steal account passwords and numbers. Social networking sites can be trolled by the criminals to gather personal information on their victims like date of birth, pet names and hobbies.
2. Once the criminal has all the necessary personal information, they release the denial-of –service attack on their victim’s phones.
3. As the victim is trying to work out why their phones are continuously ringing, the criminal begins pilfering the victim’s bank accounts. As the victim’s phone lines are jammed the financial institution has no way of directly contacting them. A daring criminal could then call the financial institution and pretend to be the victim, commenting on the problems with the phone lines while providing assurances that the ‘transactions’ should go ahead.
Due to the success of the scams in the United States, there is a possibility similar scams could be set up in Australia. The FBI website warns that ‘it is individual consumers and small-and medium-sized businesses on the front line of this battle.’ To avoid falling victim to this or similar phishing scams we advise implementing the falling measures:
- Never give out account numbers or passwords by phone or email
- Change online banking and telephone system passwords frequently
- Keep an eye on your account balances
- Install the latest virus software to protect your computers
- Be selective about what personal information you submit to social networking sites.
