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Phishing costs $20 000 000 for Russian businesses

Date: October 14, 2004
Source: Computer Crime Research Center
By: Timofey Saytarly

The financial losses of Russian businesses caused by “carder” reached $20’000’000. Carders specialized on counterfeiting plastic cards use Internet for receiving information on card holders and card’s numbers.

Two weeks earlier users noticed mass bulk mailing, the messages were aimed to clients of Citibank. Experts call it “Phishing”. Messages were written in Russian and English, all of them required receiver to browse certain web-site and update personal account. The Russian written massage says: “Your personal account has accepted wire transfer in foreign currency more than $ 2’000. According to the agreement of CitibankR Online you have to confirm you data for successful accepting money to the account. To confirm this operation it is necessary to run program of account management and fallow proposed instruction. In case of un-confirmation wire transfer will be returned to senderĀ».

Citibank take the 11-th place in rating of Russian Banks. The bank has a lot of branches in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other.

Earlier tens thousand Russians received e-mails that proposed to open an account in one of reliable U.S. banks. For this, receiver was proposed to purchase brochure with a list of U.S. banks for $22.

So, similar propositions bring to fraudsters millions dollars. According to experts, cybercrimes committed in banking and financial systems make 60–70% of total amount of cybercrimes. The list of victims contains such large banks as Barclays, Lloyds TSB and NatWest.
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