Since the beginning of the year, the number of false banks has grown 125 times

Since the beginning of 2021, 15.5 thousand pseudo-banks have appeared on the Internet, which are disguised as sites of credit organizations, according to BI.ZONE (part of Sber’s ecosystem) for Izvestia.

In particular, in November their number increased to 6.9 thousand. For comparison, in October the fake resources of credit institutions were registered four times less – 1.8 thousand, and in January – 125 times less (only 55 sites). Over the entire last year, BI.ZONE detected about 6.5 thousand fraudulent portals disguised as financial organizations.

The growth in the number of false banks on the Internet continues due to the pandemic and the remote use of banking services, explained Evgeny Voloshin, director of the BI.ZONE expert services block.

“A typical scenario of a cyberattack is as follows: cybercriminals, on behalf of the bank, send a fake / phishing e-mail, SMS notification, or enter into a dialogue on social networks to the victim. There, in the process of communication, under various pretexts, they send the victim a link / QR code leading to a phishing site that looks completely imitating the site of a financial institution. Victim data or personal account details are either used by cybercriminals for further cyberattacks, or are resold on the black market as a sought-after commodity, ”explained Aleksey Pleshkov, deputy head of Gazprombank’s information protection department.

From January to November 2021, the Bank of Russia identified and initiated blocking of 2,060 sites of false banks, the Central Bank said. The regulator emphasized that phishing resources imitating the official websites of banks pose a threat not only to citizens who can transfer their personal and banking data to cybercriminals, but also cause reputational damage to financial institutions.

Read more in the exclusive material from Izvestia:

Passwords can do anything: since the beginning of the year, the number of fake banks has grown 125 times