Cyber theft of bank accounts rising,Rs 42 lakh lost in a week

The amount was siphoned off in 22 separate online transactions between September 6 and 8. A couple of days before these transactions,his SIM had become non-functional.

In the second case,businessman Rajesh Kamdar (42) of Nana Peth lost Rs 19 lakh from his bank account on September 12. Kamdar’s cell phone stopped working a day before the money was siphoned off from the account.

In the third incident came to light on September 15 when an

engineering professor lost Rs 4.16 lakh from his bank account and in his case too the SIM had become non-functional a couple of days before.

Hrushikesh Nandedkar,a city-based information security expert,said,“These crimes are a combination of two different cyber attacks. The fraudsters track their targets who have large amounts in their bank account. Then they block the SIM card used by the account holder. One of the methods is to make an application to the cell phone companies to issue a new SIM. To do this,the fraudsters get hold of personal information of the target. It is now known that the registration forms given by cell phone users to mobile operators are many times available in black market. That is one of the source of that information.” Nandedkar said then the criminals hack the netbanking info of the target. “One of the methods used for this is called clickjacking or the information can also be stolen targeting some of the weaknesses of the browser that is used by the account holder to access the netbanking website. Using this information,multiple online transactions are made to siphon off the money.”

When Newsline tried to ask some of the senior officers of the cell phone services provider,all of them refused to talk on the issue. They however said the cell phone companies are working on this issue. Sanjay Shinde,DCP (cyber crime and economic offences wing) said,“We have observed quite a few cases in the recent past. but we have averted many fraudulent transactions as the alert account holders approached us on time. Whenever one finds that the SIM card has been blocked,one needs to freeze all the netbanking and phonebanking accounts which use that cell number.”