The cybersecurity company Positive Technologies said in January that customers of credit institutions who actively use online banking will become one of the main targets of hackers this year. According to experts, attackers will use both tools for hacking applications and social engineering techniques. Credit institutions previously informed that they see the interest of fraudsters in online applications and strengthen anti-fraud systems.
It is worth noting that most companies do not show interest in cybercrime insurance. However, credit organizations resort to this service to protect their cardholders.
Olesya Dunayeva, the owner of the Save Finance product of Sberbank, said that payments to SberInsurance customers are made within the sums insured. About 10,000 insured events were settled for all risks of the program in 2021, the average payment amounted to 20,500 rubles ($270).
Bank customers can receive insurance payouts in cases where intruders got hold of card data by calling on behalf of the bank or the police. Also, insurance is valid if the money was stolen when paying for goods and services on fake sites, using phishing, viruses, unsecured Wi-Fi, and as a result of account hacking.
According to the Central Bank, in the third quarter of last year, fraudsters stole 3.2 billion rubles (42 million dollars) from bank customers, which is 18% more than in the same period of 2020. The attackers performed 256,198 operations without the consent of consumers. Citizens were able to return 7.7% of the funds stolen by fraudsters. In the second quarter, more than 3 billion rubles (39’6 million dollars) were stolen from bank customers, and in the first quarter — almost 2.9 billion rubles (38’2 million dollars).
Earlier, VTB offered to allow banks to completely block the possibility of withdrawing and withdrawing funds from the accounts of droppers (intermediaries through which fraudsters cash out funds stolen from citizens) for up to 30 days.
As Anatoly Pechatnikov, Deputy President and Chairman of the Management Board of a credit institution, explained, now, when fraudsters gain access to the accounts of bank customers, they first withdraw money to the accounts of droppers in other credit institutions, and then cash out the stolen money. Banks cannot stop such operations, even if such an “intermediary” account has already been identified and blocked.