Online trading can be an easy, cost-effective way to manage investments. However, online investors are often targets of scams, so take precautions to ensure that you do not become a victim.

What is online trading?

Online trading allows you to conduct investment transactions over the internet. The accessibility of the internet makes it possible for you to research and invest in opportunities from any location at any time. It also reduces the amount of resources (time, effort, and money) you have to devote to managing these accounts and transactions.

What are the risks?

Recognizing the importance of safeguarding your money, legitimate brokerages take steps to ensure that their transactions are secure. However, online brokerages and the investors who use them are appealing targets for attackers. The amount of financial information in a brokerage’s database makes it valuable; this information can be traded or sold for personal profit. Also, because money is regularly transferred through these accounts, malicious activity may not be noticed immediately. To gain access to these databases, attackers may use Trojan horses or other types of malicious code.

Attackers may also attempt to collect financial information by targeting the current or potential investors directly. These attempts may take the form of social engineering or phishing attacks. With methods that include setting up fraudulent investment opportunities or redirecting users to malicious sites that appear to be legitimate, attackers try to convince you to provide them with financial information that they can then use or sell. If you have been victimized, both your money and your identity may be at risk.

How can you protect yourself?

* Research your investment opportunities - Take advantage of resources such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database and your state’s securities commission (found through the North American Securities Administrators Association) to investigate companies.

* Be wary of online information – Anyone can publish information on the internet, so try to verify any online research through other methods before investing any money. Also be cautious of “hot” investment opportunities advertised online or in email.

* Check privacy policies – Before providing personal or financial information, check the website’s privacy policy. Make sure you understand how your information will be stored and used.

* Conduct transactions on devices you control – Avoid conducting transactions on public resources such as internet kiosks, computers in places like libraries, and other shared computers and devices. Other users may introduce security risks.

* Make sure that your transactions are encrypted – When information is sent over the internet, attackers may be able to intercept it. Encryption prevents the attackers from being able to view the information.

* Verify that the website is legitimate – Attackers may redirect you to a malicious website that looks identical to a legitimate one. They then convince you to submit your personal and financial information, which they use for their own gain. Check the website’s certificate to make sure it is legitimate.

* Monitor your investments – Regularly check your accounts for any unusual activity. Report unauthorized transactions immediately.

* Use strong passwords – Protect your computer, mobile devices, and accounts with passwords that cannot easily be guessed. Use different passwords for each account.

* Use and maintain anti-virus software – Anti-virus software recognizes and protects your computer against most known viruses. However, because attackers are continually writing new viruses, it is important to keep your virus definitions current.

* Use anti-spyware tools – Spyware is a common source of viruses, and attackers may use it to access information on your computer. You can minimize the number of infections by using a legitimate program that identifies and removes spyware.

* Keep software up to date – Install software updates so that attackers can’t take advantage of known problems or vulnerabilities. Enable automatic updates if the option is available.

* Evaluate your security settings – By adjusting the security settings in your browser, you may limit your risk of certain attacks.

Social Engineering/Phishing Email

Social engineering is a strategy for obtaining information people wouldn’t normally divulge, or prompting an action people normally wouldn’t perform, by preying on their natural curiosity and/or willingness to trust. Perpetrators of scams and other malicious individuals combine social engineering with email in a number of ways.

Phishing Email

Phishing emails are crafted to look as if they’ve been sent from a legitimate organization. These emails attempt to fool you into visiting a bogus web site to either download malware (viruses and other software intended to compromise your computer) or reveal sensitive personal information. The perpetrators of phishing scams carefully craft the bogus web site to look like the real thing.

The email is sent as spam to tens of thousands of recipients. Some, perhaps many, recipients are customers of the institution. Believing the email to be real, some of these recipients will click the link in the email without noticing that it takes them to a web address that only resembles the address of the real institution. If the email is sent and viewed as HTML, the visible link may be the URL of the institution, but the actual link information coded in the HTML will take the user to the bogus site.

For example:

Visible link: http://www.yourbank.com/accounts/

Actual link to bogus site: http://itcare.co.kr/data/yourbank/index.html

The bogus site will look astonishingly like the real thing, and will present an online form asking for information like your account number, your address, your online banking username and password—all the information an attacker needs to steal your identity and raid your bank account.

What to Look For

Bogus communications purporting to be from banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions have been widely employed in phishing scams, as have emails from online auction and retail services. Carefully examine any email from your banks and other financial institutions. Most have instituted policies against asking for personal or account information in emails, so you should regard any email making such a request with extreme skepticism.

Phishing emails have also been disguised in a number of other ways. Some of the most common phishing emails include the following:

• Fake communications from online payment and auction services, or from internet service providers – These emails claim there is a “problem” with your account and request that you access a (bogus) web page to provide personal and account information.
• Fake accusation of violating Patriot Act – This email purports to be from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It says that the FDIC is refusing to ensure your account because of “suspected violations of the USA Patriot Act.” It requests you provide information through an online form to “verify your identity.” It’s really an attempt to steal your identity.
• Fake communications from an IT Department – These emails will attempt to ferret passwords and other information phishers can use to penetrate your organization’s networks and computers.
• Low-tech versions of any of the above asking you to fax back information on a printed form you can download from a (bogus) web site.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group maintains a helpful phishing archive. The archive catalogues reported phishing scams and presents not only the content of the phishing email, but also screen captures of the bogus web sites and URLs used in the scams. A review of several of the phishing scams catalogued in the archive can provide you insight into how these scams work and arm you with the information you need to avoid falling for them. You can find the Anti-Phishing Working Groups phishing archive at the following address:

http://www.antiphishing.org/phishing_archive/phishing_archive.html

Computer Clarity

PandaLabs, the anti-malware laboratory of Panda Security, has released its forecast of computer threat trends for the coming year.

More clouds on the security horizon

Welcome to the cloud. In 2007, we launched our first product which took advantage of the cloud, now in 2009 all our products use it and we have launched the first 100% cloud-based antivirus: Panda Cloud Antivirus. We have also seen this year how other major security vendors have followed our steps and taken to the cloud. 2010 will be the year in which all anti-malware companies wanting to offer real-time protection will have to follow suit. And those that don’t will be out of the game.

An avalanche of malware

The amount of malware in circulation will continue to grow exponentially. The greater speed delivered by cloud-based technologies, such as Panda’s Collective Intelligence, will force malware creators to generate even more threats in order to evade detection and elimination. Once again malware will be designed almost exclusively for financial gain, and we can expect to see many new fake antiviruses (rogueware), bots and banker Trojans.

Social engineering

Cyber-criminals will again be focusing on social engineering techniques to infect computers, particularly those targeting search engines (BlackHat SEO) and social networks, along with ‘drive-by-download’ infections from Web pages.

As the football World Cup takes place in South Africa, we can also expect to see significant amounts of malware related to this event: false ticket offers, junk mail, etc. It is always a good idea to take a suspicious view of any messages related with current affairs and large events such as this.

In the case of social networks, there have already been many examples of worms and Trojans targeting Twitter, Facebook, etc. Malware creators will continue to be drawn to these types of platforms used by so many people.

Windows 7

Windows 7 will have a major impact on malware development: where Windows Vista hardly caused a ripple, Windows 7 will make waves. One of the main reasons is the widespread market acceptance of this new OS, and as practically all new computers are coming with Windows 7 64-bit, criminals will be busy adapting malware to the new environment. It may take time, but we expect to see a major shift towards this platform over the next two years.

Cell phones

Will 2010 be the year of malware for cell phones? Several security companies have been warning for some time that malware is soon to affect cell phones in much the same way as it affects PCs. Well, we hate to rain on their parade, but 2010 will not be the year of malware for cell phones.

The PC is a homogenous platform, with 90% of the world’s computers running Windows on Intel, meaning that any new Trojan, worm, etc. has a potential victim pool of 90% of the world’s computers. The cell phone environment is much more heterogeneous, with numerous vendors using different hardware and different operating systems.

Applications are sometimes not even compatible from one OS version to another. So it is once again unlikely that 2010 will see widespread targeting of cell phones by malware. In any event, this year will witness many changes in the world of mobile telephony with more smartphones offering practically the same features as a PC; the emergence of Google Phone –first phone sold directly by Google without tying users to specific operators-; the increasing popularity of Android, not to forget the success of the iPhone. If in some years there are only two or three popular platforms, and if people begin to operate financial transactions from their cell phones, then maybe we could talk about a potential breeding ground for cyber-crime.

Mac

Mac: has the danger arrived? Mac’s market share has increased in recent years. Although the number of users has yet to reach the critical mass required to make it as profitable as PCs for cyber-criminals, it is nevertheless becoming more attractive. Mac is used just as PCs are to access social networks, email, the Internet… and these are the main malware distribution systems used by cyber-criminals. Consequently, Mac is no longer a safe haven against malware. These criminals can easily distinguish whether a system is Mac, and they have malware designed especially to target this OS. In 2009 we have already seen numerous attacks, and there are more to come in 2010.

The Cloud

Cloud-based services are not just used for security. We are all using more services delivered from the cloud, often without realizing. Who doesn’t use Hotmail or Gmail as their email service, or Flickr to store photos? But cloud-based services are not limited solely to storage, they are also used for processing data. The cloud is a tool that can help save considerable costs for companies, and as such is rapidly growing in popularity. This makes attacks on cloud-based infrastructure/services far more likely.

Cyber war

Although this term is more associated with science fiction than the real-world, it’s a phrase we are about to start hearing more often. Throughout 2009, governments around the world including the United States, the UK and Spain, have expressed concern about the potential for cyber-attacks to affect economies or critical infrastructure. We also saw this year how several Web pages in the United States and South Korea were the subject of attacks, with suspicion –as yet unapproved- pointing at North Korea. In 2010 we can expect to see similar politically-motivated attacks.

Computer Clarity