Group of 19 suspected of stealing millions from online bank accounts

Group of 19 suspected of stealing millions from online bank accounts

Nineteen people have been arrested by detectives from the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit this week as they raided a string of addresses across London on Monday.

The suspects are alleged to be part of a malware gang that spread "ZeuS" Trojan that is thought to have been responsible for the theft of some £6 million over the past three months.

The Trojan tricked unsuspecting PC users to download malicious code to capture bank login details and fuel a sophisticated identity theft and fraud operation.

The 15 men and four women, aged between 23 and 47 and are being questioned at various police stations in London on suspicion of fraud, money laundering and offences under the Computer Misuse Act. Two were also held on suspicion of possession of a firearm.

Call to action for banks

Stephen Howes, founder of two-factor authentication firm, GrIDsure, commented: “The E-Crime police arrest of banking hackers once again highlights the confusing and dangerous world that consumers are increasingly facing when it comes to the online world.

“With the increasing threat from hackers and fraudsters, online banking customers are now all expected to be security experts – having to correctly patch browsers and operating systems, secure themselves from malware, viruses and spam, while at the same time having to jump through all the security hoops that banks put in place just to logon to their account.

“The truth, though, is that consumers aren’t all security experts and never will be, and while user education of the risks is always important, I believe that banks should finally be looking at putting in place technology and systems that are easy to use and secure enough to make it very difficult for a hacker to steal logon details even if they have infected the users’ PC. These solutions are available today and it’s no longer good enough for a bank to simply say, ‘we’ll reimburse our customers if they fall victim to fraud’ – by then it’s too late and the users’ trust in that bank may have been significantly marred.”