Re: Phishing alert: Mauritius Commercial Bank

From: S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2015 07:04:30 -0800

Hi Ish,
At 05:34 03-03-2015, Ish Sookun wrote:
>The last time I received a reply from the Mauritius Commercial Bank,
>they said :
>
>Rest assure that all possible steps are taken to promptly ban the
>fraudulent domains and to inform our customers not to respond to
>these fraudulent attempts.
>
>However, I did not receive any "info" on behalf the bank letting me
>(as a customer) know of the situation. There is a short notice on
>MCB Internet Banking page right under the "Sign in" button that
>reads as follows :
>
>MCB will never ask you for your Internet Banking credentials under
>any other circumstance.
>
>The line is ambiguous and and does not really inform people of the
>actual situation. I asked several Internet users if they understood
>what is meant by the above line, they did not relate it to the
>actual phishing attacks. I believe there is a lack of security
>awareness while at the same time more people are encouraged to
>subscribe to Internet & Mobile banking.

I agree with what you wrote above. There is indeed a lack of
security awareness. I do not think that we should encourage people
to subscribe to Internet banking because of that.

>A few days ago, I received a reply from another affected bank and I
>was told that CERT-MU has been informed and a general alert was sent
>out to its constituency. The following page[1] describes CERT-MU's
>constituency. It includes home users. I subscribed to CERT-MU's
>mailing list only two days ago. I haven't received any confirmation
>to my subscription yet. Therefore, I cannot say if any
>advisory/general alert has been sent out or not. I'll wait for the
>next alert to be released, hoping that I am subscribed to the mailing list.

Two days can be a long time to confirm a mailing list
subscription. I could say that "a general alert was sent out to
[the] constituency". Are home users safer?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy
Received on Tue Mar 03 2015 - 15:09:02 PST