Surrey-based Coast Capital Savings was subjected to a cyber attack recently and news is out that the hackers managed to siphon thousands of dollars from accounts of more than 140 members in between November and December last year.
Though the total amount stolen is yet to be known, highly placed sources say that each member out of 140 lost $3000 to $6000 or more on an average.
An investigation on the cyber incident has been launched and the details from the prima facie say that fraud was conducted in two forms- Phishing and Brute Force attack.
In the Phishing attack, the cyber crooks built a fake website which mimicked the home page of the Coast Capital Savings asking people to enter sensitive info on the online page.
Erin McKinley, the spokesperson from the credit union said that most of the victims have fallen prey to the attack-touted by the ‘Better Business Bureau’ as the number one in Canada’s top 10 annual cyber scams.
In another cyber attack of similar genre, some credit union users fell prey to Brute Force attack where cybercriminals were found repeatedly entering correct account passwords through permutations and combinations driven computer software passwords until the correct one was determined.
Currently, the financial services provider is thinking to reimburse the money on a case by case basis to the victims. However, assurance on the issue is yet to be guaranteed.
Coast Capital has over 51 branches spread across Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island and Okanagan Regions of British Columbia- all in Canada. When taking membership details into account, over 535,000 members are said to be holding accounts in the database of Coast Capital Savings.
