A court has ruled in favor of a California oil company which lost $350,000 in\u00a02011 via a\u00a0cyberheist. The court ordered that the bank where the firm held its accounts and which were\u00a0accessed by hackers reimburse the stolen money.<\/p>\n
Hackers targeted the bank account of TRC Operating Co. Inc late on November 10, 2011. They\u00a0managed to highjack the account of the said company which is based in Taft, California. For five\u00a0days following Friday the 10th, the cybercriminals managed to spirit off a whopping $3.5 million to\u00a0accounts based in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
United Security Bank (USB) which is located in Fresno is the oil company\u2019s bank. During the cyber\u00a0attack on\u00a0their customer\u2019s account, the bank reclaimed all the illegal wire transfers. However, the\u00a0bank failed to stop one transfer totaling $299,000. TRC sued the bank for the lost funds. In its case,\u00a0it argued that the bank failed to use commercial procedures that are reasonably secure. For a\u00a0customer to open an account with USB, what one was offered was basically a username and a\u00a0password.<\/p>\n
According to a Dincel Law Group lawyer, Julie Rogers who represented TRC, the clients were only\u00a0offered a username and a password to enhance their banking security. The law firm had also\u00a0represented another cyberheist victim in 2012 in successfully suing its bank for the loss of\u00a0$400,000. The lawyer added that the client had an arrangement with USB where the bank was to\u00a0perform some cash management functions for TRC. The bank had assured TRC of the reliability\u00a0and the safety of the new service.<\/p>\n
The insurance company for the bank agreed to make a check of $350,000 to settle the lawsuit. This\u00a0was done just a few days before the set date for trial. The agreement, however, was that neither party\u00a0admits liability to the cyberheist incident. A business which has had its money stolen through cyber\u00a0fraud can only recover the principal plus interest under California law.<\/p>\n
An employee at TRC was the one who let in the phishing criminals inadvertently. Using the\u00a0employee\u2019s account, the criminals got access to the company\u2019s bank credentials. According to\u00a0Dennis Woods, founder, and CEO of USB, the bank’s computer system was never compromised.<\/p>\n
After conducting further investigation, it became apparent that the said employee probably had a\u00a0malware in their computer which then introduced a \u2018web inject\u2019. The web inject is a rogue code that\u00a0jumps into action the moment a victim logs into an online banking website.<\/p>\n
\u2018Web inject\u2019 introduces a rogue code into your browser\u2019s window. This will make the browser show\u00a0a \u2018pop-up\u2019 screen which asks you to enter sensitive personal information. Because you will be\u00a0assuming you are on a safe site, you will innocently enter sensitive details such as your mother\u2019s\u00a0maiden name, date of birth and so on. This information is what the hackers need to change your\u00a0bank account settings. The cyber criminal will subsequently steal, reset account access settings or\u00a0even add \u2018authorized\u2019 users.<\/p>\n
More often than not, individual citizens find themselves abandoned by the system because they\u00a0rarely get compensated, unlike their fellow corporate citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A court has ruled in favor of a California oil company which lost $350,000 in\u00a02011 via a\u00a0cyberheist. The court ordered that the bank where the firm held its accounts and which were\u00a0accessed by hackers reimburse the stolen money. Hackers targeted the bank account of TRC Operating Co. Inc late on November 10, 2011. They\u00a0managed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[87,71,83,62,48,50,58,93],"class_list":["post-7276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-news","tag-california-cyber-crime","tag-commercially-reasonable-security-measures","tag-illegal-wire-transfer","tag-krebs","tag-malware","tag-phishing","tag-us-cyber-crime","tag-web-inject"],"yoast_head":"\n