Two of the country's major banks have experienced attacks in which clients' money was unlawfully transferred to prepaid cellphone accounts - a trend which indicates a new type of e-banking fraud.
Absa Bank recently encountered a case where multiple sets of R180 MTN prepaid cellphone vouchers were transferred to cellphone numbers from a customer account.
Christo Vrey, GM of Absa's delivery channel services, assures customers the bank is doing everything to track down the perpetrator, including a full forensic investigation involving SAPS.
A similar incident occurred with two Standard Bank customers. Herman Singh, director of technology engineering at Standard Bank, is confident the bank is close to catching the perpetrator.
Malicious activity
"It has been confirmed, through the use of our log files, that the IP address of these incidences originate from [the customer's] workplace, which is indicative of malicious activity originating from that office," says Singh.
"We have now handed the investigation over to the police," says Singh.
Absa is looking at putting measures in place with all cellphone operators to prevent such attacks in future, as the majority of instances occur when full security measures were not deployed.
Vrey urges all Absa banking customers to make use of the one-time password facility. "Unfortunately, this is not yet mandatory, but we are working hard on making it so."
Standard Bank asks customers not to use any un-trusted PCs, make sure they have a personal firewall and anti-virus installed (downloadable from Standard Bank's Web site), and to make use of the bank's one-time password and "My Notification" facilities.
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