Spyware Used To Clean Out Bank Accounts

from the sneaky-sneaky-sneaky dept

Investigators are trying to track down a scammer in South Africa who seems to have cleaned out a bunch of bank accounts after using some spyware to get the account owners' passwords. The scammer apparently sent emails with an attachment that some gullible people clicked on. The attachment installed some keylogger software, which was used to determine a bank account password. Now, at least nine bank patrons have discovered that all their money is missing. Amusingly, the bank in question is going out of its way to make sure everyone knows that the scammer did not hack into their servers, but rather got the passwords off the victims own computers via the spyware. Of course, I'm wondering why all the victims came from the same bank. You would think that there would be a variety of banks that would have been targeted. It also sounds like this shouldn't be all that hard to solve. There should be information about who sent the original scam email, and investigators should be able to trace where the money was transferred to - since it was all done via an internet connection into the bank.
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  • identicon
    Adam Haberlach, 21 Jul 2003 @ 10:34am

    Same bank...

    Perhaps the keylogging software looked for password answers to a particular webpage, for a single bank, and only captured those.

    ...just a thought...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 21 Jul 2003 @ 10:47am

      Re: Same bank...

      Yup. That would make sense. Certainly make it easier than simply digging through all the crap a keylogger would pick up. Clearly, you think like an internet bank robber... ;)

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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