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Hackers target the home front
One of the UK's leading banks has been forced to admit that organised hacking gangs have been targeting its For the past year, Royal Bank of Scotland has been fighting systematic attempts to break into its computer systems from hackers who have sent personalised emails containing keyloggers to its senior This has included executives up to board level and is now the subject of a separate investigation by the Serious and Organised Crime
The hackers are homing in on the trend for people to work from The hackers make the assumption that the computers being used outside the work environment are more vulnerable than those protected by a corporate IT
Growing threat
For companies it is a growing threat as home working increases: a recent survey from the Equal Opportunities Commission found that more than 60% of the UK's population wants the option of flexible
And the hackers are employing increasingly sophisticated Each email they send is meticulously built to make it attractive to its target, who the criminals have carefully researched by trawling the internet for Once the email is composed, the malware is just as carefully designed: it is often modified to avoid detection by security
The keylogger contained in the email installs itself automatically and then collects details of logins and passwords from the unsuspecting This means that hackers can, using the usernames and passwords stolen by the keyloggers, connect to VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, which many companies use to create an encrypted pathway into their
Once inside a bank's network, the hackers can communicate directly with computers holding account information and manipulate
Has this actually happened? In some cases sources claim that the login details of VPNs have been obtained and used though there has been no confirmation that any losses have occurred as a The attacks are not believed to have focused on RBS but to have been across the whole of the banking
Royal Bank of Scotland said that the bank had suffered no losses as a result of the attacks and added: "RBS has extremely robust processes in place in order to protect our systems from Trojan email attacks are an industry-wide issue and are not isolated to a particular area or a particular "
It is not just banks that have been Last year attempts were made to steal information from the Houses of Parliament using malicious Messagelabs, the company responsible for monitoring much of the email traffic of the government and big business for suspect software, said at the beginning of the year that criminals have been evolving more sophisticated techniques to attack corporate
According to Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of Messagelabs, the number of malicious emails targeted at individuals has been Two years ago they were being seen once every two months, but now they are seeing one or two a This has been accompanied by an increase in quality in the creation of Trojans and
"The hackers are now aiming to take over computers, particularly those of home Some of the malicious software that we are routinely seeing for that purpose will have its own antivirus system built into it so that they can kill off the programs of their "
Increased vigilance
Tony Neate, the head of Get Safe Online, a government-funded organisation set up to raise awareness among UK businesses of computer criminals, says: "There is now an attempt to target individuals within UK businesses - including the banking What is happening is that crime is doing what it always does, which is look for the weakest Home working is where they perceive a
"This points to a need for increased vigilance and security by those working from home and by those responsible for letting them work from For home working to be effective, security needs to be as effective as if working in an "