Since the beginning of the Internet age, the financial industry has been one of the most vulnerable industries. It accounts for 28% of Huosan cloud-related tracking attack attempts, second only to the gaming industry. As cybercrime grows, the financial services industry will continue to be a key target for cyber attackers.
Attackers target the financial sector for a number of reasons, but the most important reason is that the financial industry is directly associated with money, making it easy to earn huge sums of money and/or obtain valuable data. Any unsecured bank data, encrypted wallets, passwords, or breaches of internal systems give attackers the opportunity they need to drain accounts and transfer information. Many financial services sites require high-value personal information, such as identification numbers, credit card or other data, to create or access account information. Unless this data is properly protected, attackers can easily access, use or sell this data. Attackers can extort websites and force financial firms to pay damages, or else risk a huge reputational damage.
Fire Umbrella Cloud will share with you the types of attacks that are most likely to be used in the financial services industry:
1. API security
The financial industry often utilizes APIs to connect applications and systems and enable features such as banking widgets and other digital services on mobile phones. While APIs make life easier for customers and developers, they also introduce entirely new threats. Since the API is designed to be easily called and accessed, it is open and easy to use in nature, which makes the API an opportunity for attackers to access the back-end database.
One of the more common API-related security threats we track is API violations, which are calls that do not match the API's intended definition. We identify API definitions either through customers providing them, or by observing API traffic and understanding definitions over time. Thus we can detect API calls that do not conform to the expected definition and define them as attacks.
Most attacks on API sites are API violations such as suspicious calls, incorrect data types, etc.
Shadow APIs are APIs that are undocumented and not maintained by normal IT management and security processes. When APIs are deprecated but not removed, they may become shadow APIs. Additionally, it could also be the result of a developer publishing an API without documentation or a manifest, or a developer inadvertently making changes to an existing hidden API that exposes it.
Failure to maintain shadow APIs presents a significant security risk and provides attackers with a medium to gain access to the rest of the network. Thirty percent of all API sessions in the financial services industry connect to shadow APIs in 2022, up from 2 percent in 2021. As more and more APIs are put into use, the risk of forgetting about an API or having it become a shadow API increases.
2. DDoS attack
In addition to denial of service, attackers can use DDoS to distract from other, more invasive attack methods, or to subvert security updates. DDoS can also be used to blackmail and blackmail financial institutions to pay attackers to restore functionality. If attackers are able to disrupt the functionality of a large financial institution and affect its ability to serve customers, they may be willing to pay large sums of money to restore service.
DDoS attacks in the financial industry are on the rise in 2022, and may increase in 2023 from the current trend. Overall, the volume of DDoS attacks targeting financial services in 2022 will increase by 121% compared to 2021. On average, a DDoS attack against financial services in 2022 lasts around 7.5 minutes, but the longest single attack we’ve monitored lasted nearly 12.5 hours.
As financial services are considered critical civilian infrastructure, any disruption to their operations could have severe repercussions. For example, at the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war conflict, Ukrainian banks suffered DDoS attacks, which greatly affected the country's ability to carry out critical services.
3. Malicious robot threat
Malicious bots pose another huge threat to the financial services industry, with 27% of traffic to financial websites coming from malicious bots and using a variety of automated methods to carry out malicious activity. Account takeover (ATO) attacks, in which bots attempt to gain access to user accounts through brute force or using stolen credentials, are common in the financial services industry.
Other bot-related attacks include credit card fraud, data scraping, or targeting financial websites at the API level. Account takeover attacks, in particular, are a huge threat to the industry. Attackers try a variety of methods to log into an existing account and gain access to the data it contains. Most ATO attacks are identified by pre-identified bot signatures or several different types of brute force attempts. At the same time, financial websites accounted for the highest proportion of ATO attacks, reaching 38%.
in conclusion
The nature of the financial services industry makes it an attractive target for attackers, but there are steps we can take to make it harder for attackers. We need professional companies like Fire Umbrella Cloud to develop a network security plan and keep abreast of the latest security updates, invest in DDoS protection to ensure continuous availability, and ensure that APIs are properly maintained.