Asian scammers hacked Irish computers to steal bank account details

Gardaí in North Cork received numerous complaints about the hackers, who practiced cold calling potential victims and claimed to be working for Microsoft. The rascals used VoIP technology to route the calls from outside the country via “their Irish base number”, which made unsuspecting people think they were genuine.

According to the Irish Examiner report, the hackers tried to con the computer users into downloading what they claimed was a free anti-virus program. But instead the program logged the victims’ bank account details.

Superintendent Pat McCarthy, who is leading the Garda investigation into scam, told the journalists of the Irish Examiner that his detectives phoned the rascals to warn them that police knew what they were up to. “The man on the end of the phone threatened to bomb our Garda station.” he reported.

It is supposed the hackers are making numerous calls to Irish computer users every day in an effort to break into their bank accounts.

This is not a single example of Microsoft scammers using widespread user confusion over Internet security in order to defraud victims. More often scammers try to ensure computer users that their PCs are infected with malware, before selling to them fake anti-virus software to supposedly fix the problem.

In June Microsoft revealed that 21 per cent of UK computer users and 15 per cent globally had been deceived by cold calling scammers. What is more, a quarter of those 15 followed the scammer’s instructions, and about 79 per cent suffered financial losses.