Spies now allies of banks in cyber fraud war

Industry body UK Finance’s most recent data shows that fraud losses of UK-issued cards totalled £566 million in 2017.

Stolen credit card details posted for sale on the dark web are being detected by government surveillance systems and with automation now allowing the credentials to be disseminated almost immediately to banks, they can now block the affected accounts and halt fraud.

In the speech to an audience of 2,500 people from across the tech community, including government, academia, and industry, GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming outlined how such operations now form part of GCHQ’s cyber security mission in the third decade of the internet age.

He explained that his spooks are now sharing real-time cybersecurity information with banks and other corporations.

Mr Fleming told a two-day cybersecurity conference in Glasgow that his agency has “made it simple for our analysts to share time-critical, secret information in seconds. With just one click this information can be shared and action taken.

“In the coming year we will continue to scale this capability, so — whether it’s indicators of a nation state cyber-actor, details of malware used by cybercriminals or credit cards being sold on the dark web — we will declassify this information and get it back to those who can act on it.”

GCHQ shares intelligence with banks “to enable them to alert customers to threats”.

Fleming also stressed the need for continued and increasing collaboration between government, academia, industry partners both at home and abroad to ensure a safer cyber environment in the UK.