Opinion

Fighting financial cybercrime

By Xiao Gang (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-10 16:43

Long-term global cooperation is the best strategy to protect individuals and companies from borderless online attacks

There is a growing financial and economic threat, a threat to all countries, posed by international hacking attacks on computer systems. Apart from global oil, energy, petrochemical and retail companies, electronic banking systems have been one of the main targets of such cyber attacks.

Recently, the FBI investigated a series of cases in which the e-banking accounts of some small and medium-sized enterprises had been breached by cyber attacks and had their deposits transferred. Morgan Stanley, the famous New York-based bank, also experienced a cyber attack on its network.

Similarly, Chinese banks have fallen victim to such cybercrime. Instead of directly attacking the e-banking systems themselves, the criminals usually registered a false website overseas and sent the banks' customers phishing e-mails to trick them into entering their account details and passwords etc, and then transferred the customers' money via e-banking using the stolen information.

In fact, financial cybercrime and phishing are an international problem. Many "China-based" cyber-attacks in foreign countries are actually staged by hackers outside China, and many attacks or phishing on Chinese e-banking systems originate from overseas IP addresses.

Obviously, under such circumstances, cross-border cybercrime falls into a similar category as climate change, drug and people trafficking and IPR protection, in that, countries need to work together to combat this common and growing threat. Countries should be ready to make joint efforts and cooperate on legal enforcement to enhance cybersecurity.

Nowadays, more and more Internet banking scams in China are closely linked with the telecommunications industry. Therefore, telecommunications companies should play an important role in regulating short messages and investigating doubtful subscribers, informing the public security agencies of any concerns.

To ensure the fund security of customers, the banking sector must further strengthen its Internet banking business infrastructure and constantly raise the level of cybersecurity so that it can repel cyber attacks.

More importantly, banks should regularly provide their customers with risk-warning information and strictly review the procedures of account-transfer and other financial transactions.

Customer education is another vital weapon in combating financial cybercrime. Many Chinese people are easily cheated by short messages, telling them, for example, to hand over 1,000 yuan ($154) of taxes in order to win a fake prize.

Some victims of cybercrimes have even been telephoned and informed they were suspected of being involved in money laundering cases, in order to prove their innocence, they were required to open a new account on an Internet banking system and transfer their deposits into the new account, or to transfer their money to a designated account set up by the criminals.

Many banks frequently inform customers never to give away their passwords regardless of any messages they may get. The banking sector should further strengthen customer awareness about cybercrime prevention.

Internet banking helps enormously in facilitating worldwide financial transactions, improving economic and social efficiency. In the first quarter of this year, the transaction volumes of Chinese Internet banking reached 191 trillion yuan, with the "big-four" State-owned banks accounting for 78.7 percent.

Looking ahead, it is clear that there is huge potential for growth in this area because of the hundreds of million netizens in China's growing Internet market. It is evident that the banking industry must enhance its abilities in cybersecurity, with regard to both technology and management.

As technology has rapidly developed, the Internet is entering a period of cyber-politics and cyber-espionage, and even "cyber-warfare". Portraying Internet freedom as an important strategic "asset" for politics, the US is planning to invest billions of dollars this year to help network users access websites blocked by some countries.

But Internet freedom does not mean that anything can and should be revealed. There should be a proper balance between Internet freedom and oversight. Freedom is not absolute. Proper Internet management can protect netizens against cybercrimes. A report released in 2009 by the Pentagon claimed that "financial enemies" had attacked the US financial system and came to the striking conclusion that this was one of the causes of the global financial crisis in 2008.

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Combating cybercrimes is a common task for all governments. It is good news that there was a discussion on cybersecurity in Deauville, France, during the G8 meeting. French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the leaders of Facebook, Google and other technology companies to support greater rule of law on the Web in such a way that innovation would not be harmed. Also, the US and UK proposed new schemes to force Internet companies to block websites that facilitate online piracy.

The US holds a dominant technological position. However, the booming Internet use throughout the world means the network must become a way to promote peace and development.

To formulate international policies on Internet security is thus a matter for all countries.

The prevention of cybercrime is no easy task. This is a whole new field that needs consistently evolving, long-term global collaboration.