Activity was conducted on at least eight HSBC and Bank of China (Hong Kong) e-banking accounts
DANNY.MOK@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Thursday, 21 April, 2016, 10:09am
HSBC says it detected suspicious transactions during regular monitoring for fraudulent activity. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
The Monetary Authority has sent out an alert after the discovery of HK$6.86 million in unauthorised share trading on least eight HSBC and Bank of China (Hong Kong) e-banking accounts over the past two weeks.
It is understood that the perpetrators had acquired access to some of the e-banking accounts by guessing PINs. But the money could not be transferred out to unregistered accounts because two-factor authentication was required.
The authority said it was difficult to figure out whether the trades were profitable, and what the losses were in these cases, if any.
The suspicious trades were detected by one of the banks because trades made by different e-banking accounts were conducted from a single IP address.
HSBC and Bank of China (Hong Kong) have called the police, and customers whose accounts were involved have been contacted.
HSBC said it had detected suspicious transactions in some personal customers’ internet banking activity in regular monitoring for fraudulent activity.
Besides the two banks, three reports involving online trading accounts at securities firms were received this year.
All five cases are being investigated by the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau.
HSBC and Bank of China (Hong Kong) advised customers to take security precautions by selecting PINs that cannot easily be guessed.
The authority said it had required banks to step up their surveillance efforts to counter fraud attempts of a similar nature.
It said a bank customer would not be held responsible for any direct loss as a result of unauthorised e-banking transactions unless they acted fraudulently or with gross negligence.
If anyone is aware of unauthorised transactions conducted on their accounts, they should inform their banks and contact police at 2860 5012.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1937463/hong-kong-banks-discover-hk686-million-unauthorised-share
