Fraudsters phish for NatWest clients with 'Stephen Hester' email
Web link snare asks for personal info
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
NatWest customers are being targeted by a run of fake "phishing" emails exploiting the recent disruption in the bank's services, Action Fraud warns.
The fraudulent electronic messages offer prospective marks access to their accounts in exchange for personal information. In reality the opportunistic scam is purely designed to extract personal information to later extract money from compromised accounts or for other forms of ID theft.
"One of the phishing emails, purporting to be from Stephen Hester, the head of RBS, apologises for the problems at RBS and says a 'security upgrade' requires [customers] to update their information," Action Fraud explains.
"But if customers follow the web link in the email, they are taken to an 'incredibly realistic' replica of the NatWest website.
"If they do enter their account details on the fake site, the fraudsters will be able to log in to their account and steal all their money. There is also a risk that your identity could be compromised."
Alan Woodward, a professor of computing at Surrey University, said: "This shows how on-the-ball these opportunistic criminals are. Imagine not being able to access your bank account and then getting one of these.
"Given the number of NatWest customers and the volume of emails that the scammers send, some people are going to fall for it, especially if they are desperate."
Recipients of the NatWest phishing email are advised to ignore it and on no account to open attachments or enter personal details after following links from such emails. ®
COMMENTS
How long until we see an email along the lines of
"hello, my name is Sanjit and I work for RBS in India. I made a mistake on a data backup which caused all the problems with the bank. Luckily my manager has not been able to place the blame on me but when we fixed the system I realized that £10MILLION was left in a holding account - if he sees this he'll know it was my fault and sack me. Can you help me please and let me transfer this money into your account - you can keep the money and I'll keep my job"
Re: Catch-22
There's this thing called a phone ;-)
They love it, you get to sit on hold for hours whilst they make money for every minute the call is connected, and when you still get through they're still no help!
Jaded? Moi?
What is this "click on the email address" thing you speak of? I didn't know that Elm had a GUI interface..
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
