Filed under Privacy
Tagged as passwords
Almost 16 million people are in danger of falling victim to internet fraud because we use the same password for almost every website, a new study has found.
This could lead to money being stolen from bank accounts, fraudulent purchases via online shops or identity theft, according to life assistance company CPP.
The average internet user is asked for a password by 23 websites a month.
The research found 46 per cent of British internet users, 15.6 million, have the same password for most web-based accounts and five per cent, or 1.7 million, use the same password for every single website.
Some 29 per cent use variations of the same password, for example using days of the week or adding numbers to the end of a word.
Memorable dates, children’s names and mother’s maiden names are each used by one in 10. One in five users sign in with their pet’s name.
Users are advised to keep passwords secret but 40 per cent admit disclosing them to friends or family while two per cent say their former partner still has access to their accounts.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
Filed under Malware
Tagged as botnet, passwords, zeus
Two-factor authentication — used to protect online bank accounts with both a password and a computer-generated one-time passcode — is supposed to be more secure than relying on a single password.
But Gartner Research VP Avivah Litan warns that cyber criminals have had success defeating two-factor authentication systems in Web browsing sessions using Trojan-based man-in-the-middle attacks.
Confidential information is everywhere, so it must be protected Typo Squatting and Cross Site Scripting are just a couple of the recent threats facing the presidential candidate web sites, according to researcher Oliver Friedrichs. Confidential information is everywhere, so it must be protected A Gartner Research note written by Litan explains that in the past few months, Gartner has heard from many banks around the world that rely on one-time-password authentication systems. Accounts at these banks have been compromised by man-in-the-middle attacks — the report uses the term “man-in-the-browser” — despite the use of two-factor security.
One technique that the fraudsters have been using to bypass security controls is call forwarding.
“[B]anks that rely on voice telephony for user transaction verification have seen those systems and processes compromised by thieves who persuade telecom carriers to forward legitimate user phone calls to the thief’s cell phone,” the report says. “These targeted attacks have resulted in theft of money and/or information, if the bank has no other defenses sufficient to prevent unauthorized access to their applications and customer accounts.”
A man-in-the-middle attack involves using software or hardware to intercept network traffic then send it to its destination so that the information can be used without the knowledge of the sender or the intended recipient.
In an e-mail, Litan said that the attacks have involved the Zeus Trojan and other customized malware.
Source: DarkReading
