“The most current and dangerous fraudulent schemes are phone calls and instant messaging from law enforcement officials and the Central Bank with the need to transfer money to a ‘safe’ account,” he said.
Further developments, Kuznetsov added, could develop according to two scenarios. In the first case, attackers try to obtain personal information in order to continue stealing funds; in the second, they force people to make financial transactions on their own by means of persuasion.
Earlier, Sberbank head German Gref named the three most popular ways for fraudsters to trick Russians. These include hacking accounts in instant messengers and sending messages to contacts asking them to borrow money, threatening that a loved one is being held by law enforcement and they need funds to “give a bribe,” and a call supposedly from an intelligence officer.
VTB, for its part, warned that telephone scammers have begun using music from Russian banks’ advertisements to imitate the work of their “contact centers.”
