BANKS and businesses in the country could be trapped inside the crosshairs of many attackers as the landscape of financial attacks is expanding, a Symantec Corp. executive said.
The attackers are attempting to strike organizations in “less saturated regions” that could be less secure, Symantec Asia CTO Matthias Yeo told the BusinessMirror. “We have seen a large increase in financial Trojan detection in Asia and last year,” Yeo said in an e-mail interview. “And [the] Philippines landed on the 6th spot.”
The American cybersecurity firm has found out several attempts by attackers to transfer millions of dollars in fraudulent banks transactions, Yeo added. Retail businesses, hotels and point of sales terminals also faced financial threats in 2016.
“Even ATM [automated teller machine] threats are still active and evolving, although they often require physical access to the machine,” Yeo said, adding the financial threats “outsizes” ransomware threats.
According to Yeo, the financial-threats space is 2.5 times bigger than ransomware with more than 1.2 million detections annually. He added 38 percent of the financial threats that Symantec detected last year were found in large business locations.
Malicious e-mails—not targeted attacks—triggered the infections, Yeo added citing the Bangladesh central bank cyber heist last year as “one of the most audacious of its kind”.
The attackers made four successful requests to transfer $81 million to casino-related accounts in the Philippines, Yeo explained. Of the $81 million, $15 million were returned by a casino to the Bangladesh central bank in November last year.
In a recent interview, Isaac Sabas, CEO of Pandora Security Labs, a homegrown and all-Filipino cybersecurity provider, said that aside from financial institutions, the e-commerce in the country was also facing cyber threats.
Most of the attacks were coming from China, Romania and Germany, according to Sabas.
“Financial institutions should have a multilayered protection to secure not only their organization but also its customers, as well against threats,” he told the BusinessMirror.
According to Yeo, users should also observe measures to reduce risk.
“It should be clear that financial threats are a global problem, and no one is safe from them, anyone could be a target no matter which country you are in,” Yeo said.