Social Media: Bank of Melbourne’s Twitter Account Hacked
- Australia-based Bank of Melbourne, subsidiary of the WestPac group, explains its Twitter account has been attacked and that Direct Messages have been sent to its followers.
- This attack aimed at retrieving the users’ connection details; their bank accounts were not targeted.
- This example could have contributed to future identity usurpation attempts and again illustrates social-media-related risks for the financial sector.
- Phishing attempts could have been launched using the gathered information. Both the bank and its customers could have been affected as the latter seldom distrust “direct messages” received from allegedly trusted senders.
- Through attempting to adapt to their customers’ way to communicate, banking institutions regularly make use of these new channels. Nevertheless, dedicated security features will have to be set up to avoid large scale fraud issues, as was the case when no strong authentication solutions were available to secure the surge of the e-commerce market.