Russia’s Kaspersky says cybercriminals to attack banks in 2015

MOSCOW, Dec 10 (PRIME) -- Cyber-criminals will increase attacks on ATMs, ticket terminals and various payment systems in 2015, Kaspersky Lab, a Russian producer of software security programs, said in its annual report Wednesday.

“As most of these systems are running Windows XP and also suffer from frail physical security, they are incredibly vulnerable by default and, as the impersonal gatekeepers of the financial institutions' cash, cybercriminals are bound to come knocking here first,” the company said.

“In 2015, we expect to see further evolution of these ATM attacks with the use of APT techniques to gain access to the "brain" of cash machines. The next stage will see attackers compromising the networks of banks and using that level of access to manipulate ATM machines in real time.”

Ticketing terminals are also in danger due to the same reason, and in many cities they handle credit card transaction data directly. Kaspersky said it expects to see bolder attacks on these systems to either game the system or steal credit card data for themselves.”

Virtual payment systems, which are now in a formative stage, are also very attractive for criminals. “We expect criminals to leap at every opportunity to exploit these. Whether social engineering the users, attacking the endpoints (cellphones in many cases), or hacking the banks directly, cybercriminals will jump all over directly monetized attacks and virtual payment systems will end up bearing the brunt,” Kaspersky Lab said.

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