The Hindu Business Line : Beware of proxy servers!

The gravity of the threat can be seen from the fact that some proxy Web sites have been registered on the names of leading banks to cheat the people.

G. Naga Sridhar

Hyderabad, July 17 If you are a regular customer of Net banking and receive any mail from your bank asking for information update or reconfirmation of your particulars, think twice before clicking on the mouse. The mail could be originating from a proxy bank intending to access your confidential information, cautions Mr Patrik Runald, Senior Security Specialist, F-Secure Labs, Malaysia.

“Globally, accessing confidential account information through proxy banking has been on the rise and given the pace at which the banking sector is growing in India, attempts are already being made to crash into banking information of netizens in India,” Mr Runald told Business Line here.

The gravity of the threat can be seen from the fact that already some proxy Web sites have been registered on the names of leading Indian banks to cheat the people. “You may be surprised to know that proxy servers such as ‘iciciconsumer-

-durableloans. com’, ‘iciciprulife.info’ and ‘hcici.com’ are hosted from somewhere in China. The cyber criminals can use them for phishing, among other illegal activities,” he said. Tackling of similar crimes in countries such as China, Brazil, and Indonesia have already become a problem for the law-enforcing agencies, Mr Runald said, adding that non-familiarity of most of the customers with the safety modalities of Net banking could aid proliferation of such problems in India.

Precautions

On the precautions front, Mr Runald said a separate domain for banks may be of use. “We believe that a new domain such as ‘.bank’ may solve the problem to some extent. Recently, Brazil has created it and made mandatory for all banks. India can also adopt it,” he said.

From the customer’s side, responding to mails which appeared to be originated from their bankers for information should be taken with a pinch of salt in addition to the adoption of protective software solutions, he added.

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