Banks Urge Businesses To Lock Down Online Banking 201
tsu doh nimh writes "Organized cyber-gangs in Eastern Europe are increasingly preying on small and mid-size companies in the US, setting off a multimillion-dollar online crime wave that has begun to worry the nation's largest financial institutions, The Washington Post's Security Fix blog reports: '"In the past six months, financial institutions, security companies, the media and law enforcement agencies are all reporting a significant increase in funds transfer fraud involving the exploitation of valid banking credentials belonging to small and medium sized businesses," reads a confidential alert issued by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group created to share data about critical threats to the financial sector.' The banking group is urging that commercial bank customers 'carry out all online banking activity from a standalone, hardened, and locked-down computer from which e-mail and Web browsing is not possible.' The story includes interviews with several victim businesses, and explains that in each case, the fraudsters — thought to reside in Eastern Europe — are using "'money mules,' unwitting or willing accomplices in the US hired via Internet job boards. The blog has more stories and details about these crimes."
Seriously? (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously? A *standalone* machine? You mean I shouldn't check my bank accounts from my kids' Windows ME computer?
Just joking, I've already mastered the first skill of safe computer use ... not having kids, or Windows ME.
Cost of using Windows (Score:4, Funny)
I guess this is what you get when you run your small business on Windows.
That's a great idea (Score:5, Funny)
And maybe the banks can even set up some standalone, hardened, and locked-down computers in convenient locations around the city for their customers to use. Maybe they could even get money out of these computers. They could be like bank tellers, but automated.
people who won't act civilized... (Score:5, Funny)
People who won't act civilized should sooner or later find themselves 'de-civilized'. Why are we taking an endless amount of shit from these losers?
A few hydrogen-to-helium convertors delivered right to their door does wonders to get across the message we are not a people to be fucked with!
If they can't police themselves and insist on ripping off systematically people in foreign countries, then send 'em some great balls of fire.
When this shit happened fifty years ago, Khrushchev would have just sent some NKVD to scoop up these parasites, take 'em back behind the outhouse, and beat their brains inside out. And all their friends and family would get ten years in the gulag.
I miss Nikita and Eisenhauer. (Nike and Ike) Great times. No one took any shit: no one gave anyone chickenshit like this. There were limits and those limits were respected. No one from Eastern Europe was sneaking into your bank account. Fucking peasants. Khrushchev slaughtered almost a million of his own troops to stop the Germans at Stalingrad. One phone call from the US State Department and all these sleazy little cock-sucking hackers would have been mince-meat.
Nike and Ike had the ability to blow up the world. But, they didn't blow up the world. They came to respect life after taking part in so much slaughter and bloodletting.
Would you trust a sleezy Ukrainian hacker with a modem to not blow up the world if he had a chance? No way. Or some smug little twisted little shit-for-brains in Estonia to behave himself. Let's face facts here; going to another country and randomly stealing people's money is an act of war! When is Putin gonna knock these guys upside the head so hard that their eyes roll out? We have real enemies now and we need to work together against them. All this cross-border chickenshit financial crime is inexcusable. It's a new world, a new century. Get a real job, stop fucking around with petty rip-offs. Assholes!
Let's all work together to rid civilization of the shit-people!
Another great Slashdot rant. Too bad it will get modded down to -1 by toads that don't appreciate this kind of thing.
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Ya, I caught that too. Get on a computer that can't browse to web sites, and then browse to http://mybank.example.com/ [example.com] . Brilliant advice.
Microsoft is urging it's customers to 'carry out all computing activity from a standalone, hardened, and locked-down computer which is not plugged into any electrical outlet. Such a secure "computer" is known colloquially as the "typewriter"
Re:people who won't act civilized... (Score:1, Funny)
I guess it depends on whether you wake up tomorrow with spider powers or cancer.
Re:That's a great idea (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but you know they'd screw it up somehow, like have it run Windows or have a company like Diebold to make them...