Banks prevent fraudulent thefts worth ₽5.8 trillion in 2023
Last year, banks repelled 34.8 million cyber attacks aimed at stealing households’ funds, as mentioned in the Overview of Transactions Not Authorised by Customers of Financial Institutions. The Bank of Russia started collecting statistics on prevented thefts in 2023.
Nevertheless, fraudsters managed to conduct 1.17 million successful transactions, which is 33% more than in 2022, and steal ₽15.8 billion. One of the possible reasons is more targeted and prepared attacks by phone fraudsters. To implement such attacks, fraudsters get more information about bank customers from open sources, as well as information leaks from companies and organisations in various industries.
As a result, bank customers’ losses increased by 11.5%. The volume of transfers via bank cards, which remains the most popular payment instrument among fraudsters, increased by approximately the same percentage. It was from cards that the biggest amounts of money were stolen.
The use of sensitive data by criminals increases the risk of theft of both households’ savings and credit funds received under fraudsters’ influence.
To resolve this problem, the regulator plans to establish requirements for anti-fraud procedures of financial institutions when issuing loans and micro loans. In addition, a new mechanism for combating fraudulent transactions related to funds transfers will come into effect in July 2024. Banks will suspend suspicious transfers for two days so that customers can refuse such transactions. If a bank does not suspend the funds transfer to a fraudulent account, information about which is in the regulator’s special database, and transfers money to fraudsters, it will be obliged to return the funds to the customer.
Last year, the share of funds that credit institutions returned to customers almost doubled (₽1.38 billion, or 8.7% of the total amount of stolen money).
The regulator initiated the blocking of 575,700 phone numbers used by scammers, as well as 42,800 fraudulent websites and pages on social networks.
The problem of cyber fraud and ways to solve it will be the topic of a panel session at the Cybersecurity in Finance forum on 14 February 2024. The broadcast of the discussion with the participation of the Bank of Russia Governor will be available on the regulator’s website, YouTube and Telegram channels, as well as the pages on the social networks VK and Odnoklassniki.