Man on trial over £600k NatWest phishing scam

Fraudsters used a sophisticated Trojan to steal online bank login credentials from the compromised PCs of their victims, London's Southwark Crown Court heard on Tuesday. The malware redirected surfers to a counterfeit NatWest bank website that attempted to trick prospective marks into handing over telephone numbers, passwords …

[dunncha]

Amazing - The Bank actually caught somebody stealing....

Suprising to say the least. I though they just blamed customers for being stupid and left them with the bill.

Is this the new caring sharing Banks Ole Gordo BrOOn keeps telling us about.

Maybe I'm dumb but isn't electronic fraud easy to track. The money left account 123 and went to account 234 then off to account 345 then off to account 456.

Fooled you! Of course its not that easy because the banks don't know where their own money is half the time. And if they do know where it is they aint telling. They wouldn't want to upsert their big tax avoiding customers now would they.

[Alan B]

@ dunncha

You said "Maybe I'm dumb but isn't electronic fraud easy to track. The money left account 123 and went to account 234 then off to account 345 then off to account 456."

Not really that simple, is it? The money that was in account 123 most likely gets drawn out as cash. How do you track it after that?

[Andrew 6]

How did this occur this year?

Part of the Natwest Online banking I use is that you cant set up payments to accounts you havent sent money to before with out your bank card and card reader.

[Iain 25]

Electronic trail

@dunncha:

That's the purpose of the middle-men mules. They're gullible / unscrupulous / desperate (or all 3) individuals who get told "If you let me transfer £6000 into your account electronically, you can keep £250 for yourself, and you give me the balance in cash".

The electronic trail stops with them.

[Jon Thompson 2]

Oh dear

If the others have pleaded guilty, it doesn't look good for the main defendant.

To add to Duncha's comment., A Nat West bank manager I know says the cameras in cash machines usually don't work. That's why he always gets a receipt for his cash withdrawals.

[Ozwadi Ogolugi]

Name

With names like that that they all sound the sort!!

[MadonnaC]

Money still missing

Why do I have a feeling that NatWest will end up saying "My bad, so sad" to the punters mising the remaining £460K

[Anonymous Coward]

Daily mail makes stuff up

Speaking of the Dailymail....

Here's Beckham arguing with a fan... definitely not faked, no sir, not badly photoshopped at all, totally true and honest....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1200828/Beckham-backlash-American-dream-crumbles-U-S-fans-turn-disloyal-star.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm

The banking system is a scam, meaningless numbers on a screen.

Look at all my money: £1,0000000000000...... Oh i lost some, where can it be..... oh here it is '0', sorted.

Well if the banks get hit to hard, the tax payer can always bail them out no?! Suckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

re How did this occur this year?

Because the natwests systems are crap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...

re: How did this get through this year... It's a man in the middle attack - the target is at one end, the bank is at the other, the criminal is in the middle. The auth details are passed from the bank via the fake web site to the victim. What happens at the bank end is controlled by the man in the middle, with a fake web site being shown to the victim. Easy. Well, not that easy, but very hard to defend against.

re: Why electronic fraud isn't easy to track: If you take your cash and move it to a country where they have tight banking secrecy laws you've made it disappear. Again, it's fairly easy and very hard to defend against.

[Anonymous Coward]

sophisticated trojan malware

What computer operating system did this sophisticated Trojan malware run on ? What indemnification did the software provider, provide against such phishing attacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

protection from malware

Use one of those bootable CDs or run from a read only USB device. You can get a version off the back of a magazine.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/