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Thieves Use a Denial of Services Attacks to Drain Bank Accounts
05/20/2010
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Stan Shyshkin, May 18
Denial of Service attacks are nothing. Hackers have been using them for years to bring down websites. The way that a Denial of Service (DoS) attack works is that a hacker will send out a huge number of requests to a server that will be much more then it can deal with, which will in turn bring down the server. The goal is not always financial, but rather just to cause chaos or bring down a competitor. Another variation of this attack is the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), which is the same thing, except the hacker also installs bots in other people's computers, which force their computers to also launch the DoS attacks at the same time, making each attack that much stronger.
However, there is now a new twist to this attack. Hackers are now performing it on telephone lines so that the owner of the phone can't receive any calls. This is done by creating a number of VoIP accounts, and using them with automated dialing tools to flood a person's home, business and cellphone with calls. The idea here is that when a business or an individual needs to make a phone call to verify something, such as a huge bank account withdrawal, the bank won't be able to reach the person because all his or her phone lines are tied up.
The thieves combine this attack with changing the primary phone numbers that the banks call to verify these huge transactions. The thieves get the victim's account information through some other means, such as a phishing attack or other method, and then call the banks to change the victim's contact information so that the bank will call the thief instead of the victim to verify a money transfer request.
Read the full article at BrickHouseSecurity.com... |
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