Caught in the Net: Bank Customers

The financial crisis may have caught most of us flat-footed, but there’s one group that has easily adapted to the new economic order: cybercriminals. Capitalizing on popular fears with new phishing campaigns, scammers are enjoying something of a bull market, according to the FBI. In a particularly clever ruse, criminals sent a fraudulent e-mail instructing ...

The financial crisis may have caught most of us flat-footed, but there's one group that has easily adapted to the new economic order: cybercriminals. Capitalizing on popular fears with new phishing campaigns, scammers are enjoying something of a bull market, according to the FBI. In a particularly clever ruse, criminals sent a fraudulent e-mail instructing Wachovia customers to hand over their online banking credentials ahead of a prospective merger with Citigroup. One cybercrime expert, who detected a jump in malicious software as U.S. stocks first headed south, told Information Week that economic anxiety could be causing nervous users to make bad decisions: "If the stock market is crashing, there’s not a lot of confidence." Unless you’re a thief, apparently.

The financial crisis may have caught most of us flat-footed, but there’s one group that has easily adapted to the new economic order: cybercriminals. Capitalizing on popular fears with new phishing campaigns, scammers are enjoying something of a bull market, according to the FBI. In a particularly clever ruse, criminals sent a fraudulent e-mail instructing Wachovia customers to hand over their online banking credentials ahead of a prospective merger with Citigroup. One cybercrime expert, who detected a jump in malicious software as U.S. stocks first headed south, told Information Week that economic anxiety could be causing nervous users to make bad decisions: "If the stock market is crashing, there’s not a lot of confidence." Unless you’re a thief, apparently.

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