Sabrina A. Gordon, Business Reporter

Martin

Jamaica's financial sector has caught the attention of hackers and identity thieves lately, with the latest phishing threat surfacing in the form ofa scam email purported to be from National Commercial Bank (NCB) requesting the verification of personal account information.

"NCB will never send an email requesting your personal account information," said Sheree Martin, senior assistant general manager of group marketing and commu-nications at the banking group.

NCB has about 80,000 electronic financial services subscribers.

The bank said it got seven calls through its customer-care centre reporting receipt of the hackers' phishing email.

some customers followed through

Three customers of the seven reported that they had followed through on the email request.

"These customers were asked to reset their Internet banking login password," said Martin.

"The other four customers did not follow through on the hackers' email requesting that they update their account information, and as such, their password could not have been compromised."

The phishing email asking persons to update their NCB account credentials came to the bank's attention on August 30.

Since then, NCB has taken steps via press and electronic media advertisements to advise customers of the fraudulent email and remind them of ways to protect their online banking activity.

Warnings were also posted on the bank's website.

The relevant external parties were also notified, said Martin, and since then, the fake website to which the information was phished has been shut down.

The bank has also advised its Internet service provider to blacklist emails from the spoofed address.

Martin said NCB had detected no authorised activity in any of its customers' accounts, before or after the complaints of the email scam, but said investigations were ongoing.

In the meantime, the bank wants to reassure its customers that money cannot be taken from accounts via online transactions.

"Internet banking transactions are limited to bill payments and the transfer of funds between the customer's own accounts," said Martin.

And, no third-party transactions are allowed on the Internet banking system.

"Based on the transactions that can be done online, it is highly unlikely that funds could be diverted from the customer's account to an unknown source," Martin said.

As part of new security measures, NCB has improved its firewalls, 128-bit SSL, or secure sockets layer, encryption on its web servers, and blocking access to certain sites after a set maximum of login attempts.

Phishing, as Martin noted, is a worldwide problem not confined to Jamaican financial houses.

The fraud involves hackers sending emails to customers of an institution - sometimes the mails are sent to random addresses - enticing them to fake websites that are replicas of the authentic site and soliciting login and account credentials.

The Internet is also plagued by hackers who take control of websites, often changing information or sometimes redirecting visitors to a site.

Kingston-based First Global Financial Services was the victim of the latter a week ago when visitors were directed to a site called www.m0sted.net/kerem125.html, which appeared to be Islamist in nature and whose authors also appeared to be angry with Sweden.

It later emerged that a Swedish newspaper had published a cartoon of the head of Prophet Mohammed on a dog's body.

sabrina.gordon@gleanerjm.com