By Brian Krebs - Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 25, 2009



Organized cyber-gangs in Eastern Europe are increasingly preying on small and mid-size companies in the United States, setting off a multimillion-dollar online crime wave that has begun to worry the nation's largest financial institutions.



A task force representing the financial industry sent out an alert Friday outlining the problem and urging its members to implement many of the precautions now used to detect consumer bank and credit card fraud.



"In the past six months, financial institutions, security companies, the media and law enforcement agencies are all reporting a significant increase in funds transfer fraud involving the exploitation of valid banking credentials belonging to small and medium sized businesses," the confidential alert says. The alert was sent to members of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group created to share data about critical threats to the financial sector. The group is operated and funded by such financial heavyweights as American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Morgan Stanley.



Because the targets tend to be smaller, the attacks have attracted little of the notoriety that has followed larger-scale breaches at big retailers and government agencies. But the industry group said some companies have suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in losses.



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