One-stop shop financial services groups should be more vigilant about how they store and manage client accounts after a new report found that online criminals are getting better at exploiting stolen financial data.
Security solutions provider Symantec has released a new report on the online "underground economy", providing a clearer picture on how illegally accessed data are sold as ‘goods and services' in the online black market.
According to the report, the industry has grown into an efficient, global market place with an estimated total value of more than US$276 million in the year to June.
That's a big sum considering stolen credit card details retail for as little as 10 cents to US$25 per card while stolen bank account details sell for between US$10 and US$1,000.
But the stakes are magnified when the average credit card data, sold for 10 cents, gives access to a card with a maximum limit of US$4,000 while the average bank account balance is $40,000, according to Symantec.
The report found that US is still the major centre of ‘servers' that then solicit potential buyers through internet chatrooms. Australia is among the top ten, ranking sixth as the source of servers selling stolen financial data to the black market.
Australia is also one of the most mature markets and houses the fourteenth longest running ‘server' in the world.
Symantec Australia director David Dzienciol said a bigger threat is that cybercriminals are also selling the ‘infrastructure' needed to hack into company and individual websites.
"It's not only personal information that's being sold for millions of dollars, so are the tools and infrastructure to enable this sort of activity," he said.
For example, phishing and pharming tools such as bot.nets are in the market for US$225 while a keystroke logger can be bought for US$23.
Dzienciol said the next threat that companies need to be aware of are internet attacks through social networking sites.
"Personal data can be sourced through social networking so we would warn people that when they adopt social networking, they should do it under secure means."
