In a statement released by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the FBI officials have announced and stated a warning for all small- and medium-sized organizations to be on their toes as there has been an increase in the number of cyber attacks on such businesses. Hackers that are perpetrating these cyber crimes are also siphoning off millions of dollars almost every week and so far the financial damages caused by these attacks have passed $100 million.

National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) working in close proximity with the FBI is currently investigating the incidents and is working hard to come up with a concrete solution aimed at tackling this problem of immense magnitude. According to the FBI officials,

“There has been a significant increase in what’s known as ACH (automated clearinghouse) fraud over the past few months, much of it targeting small businesses, municipal governments and schools.”

The modus operandi of these cyber criminals initially beings with an enticing or informative e-mail sent to the people in charge of finances for the small and medium companies. These e-mails are generally laced with malicious phishing software codes, that work as a xerox machine and copies all the online banking credentials of the individuals or the organizations. Once the hackers have all the necessary details, they begin eroding the financial foundations of their victims and are able to move millions of dollars in just a day via online bank transfers.

The fake ACH transfers are detectable and that is the sole reason that, hackers prefer to hit the small business and municipal government funds, because these funds are mostly kept in a localized bank, that more often than not isn’t fully protected from cyber attacks. According to the report released by FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3),

“In several cases banks did not have proper firewalls installed, nor anti-virus software on their servers or their desktop computers. The lack of defense-in-depth at the smaller institution/service provider level has created a threat to the ACH system.”

Via Computer World.