Hackers target the home front

　　1. One of the UK's leading banks has been forcedto admit that organised hacking gangs have beentargeting its executives. For the past year, Royal Bank of Scotland has been fightingsystematic attempts to break into its computer systems from hackers who have sentpersonalised emails containing keyloggers to its senior management. This has includedexecutives up to board level and is now the subject of a separate investigation by the Seriousand Organised Crime Agency.

　　2. The hackers are homing in on the trend for people to work from home. The hackersmake the assumption that the computers being used outside the work environment are morevulnerable than those protected by a corporate IT department.

　　Growing threat

　　3. For companies it is a growing threat as home working increases: a recent survey fromthe Equal Opportunities Commission found that more than 60% of the UK's population wantsthe option of flexible working.

　　4. And the hackers are employing increasingly sophisticated techniques. Each email theysend is meticulously built to make it attractive to its target, who the criminals have carefullyresearched by trawling the internet for information. Once the email is composed, the malware isjust as carefully designed: it is often modified to avoid detection by security software.

　　5. The keylogger contained in the email installs itself automatically and then collectsdetails of logins and passwords from the unsuspecting user. This means that hackers can,using the usernames and passwords stolen by the keyloggers, connect to VPNs, or VirtualPrivate Networks, which many companies use to create an encrypted pathway into theirnetworks.

　　6. Once inside a bank's network, the hackers can communicate directly with computersholding account information and manipulate funds.

　　7. Has this actually happened? In some cases sources claim that the login details of VPNshave been obtained and used though there has been no confirmation that any losses haveoccurred as a result. The attacks are not believed to have focused on RBS but to have beenacross the whole of the banking industry.

　　8. Royal Bank of Scotland said that the bank had suffered no losses as a result of theattacks and added: "RBS has extremely robust processes in place in order to protect oursystems from fraud. Trojan email attacks are an industry-wide issue and are not isolated to aparticular area or a particular bank."

　　9. It is not just banks that have been targets. Last year attempts were made to stealinformation from the Houses of Parliament using malicious email. Messagelabs, the companyresponsible for monitoring much of the email traffic of the government and big business forsuspect software, said at the beginning of the year that criminals have been evolving moresophisticated techniques to attack corporate networks.

　　10. According to Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of Messagelabs, the number ofmalicious emails targeted at individuals has been increasing. Two years ago they were beingseen once every two months, but now they are seeing one or two a day. This has beenaccompanied by an increase in quality in the creation of Trojans and spyware.

　　11. "The hackers are now aiming to take over computers, particularly those of home users.Some of the malicious software that we are routinely seeing for that purpose will have its ownantivirus system built into it so that they can kill off the programs of their competitors."

　　Increased vigilance

　　12. Tony Neate, the head of Get Safe Online, a government-funded organisation set up toraise awareness among UK businesses of computer criminals, says: "There is now an attemptto target individuals within UK businesses - including the banking sector. What is happening isthat crime is doing what it always does, which is look for the weakest link. Home working iswhere they perceive a weakness.

　　13. "This points to a need for increased vigilance and security by those working fromhome and by those responsible for letting them work from home. For home working to beeffective, security needs to be as effective as if working in an office."

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