ICICI Bank says mobile app malware not a threat to customers

Mumbai, Jan 12 (PTI) Largest private sector lenderICICI Bank today virtually acknowledged the presence of amalware in its mobile banking application, but underplayed itsimpact on its customers."Whatever we have seen, the malware seems to be notvery significant," bank's chief technology and digital officerB Madhivanan told reporters over a conference call.The admission comes days after Quickheal, a Pune-basedcyber security firm, had warned lenders of the presence of amalware in the mobile banking apps running on the popularoperating system, Android."Anyone who wants to sell their anti-malware kind ofproducts, they have the right to continuously test and bringit in," Madhivanan said, retorting to the warning from theanti-virus maker last week.According to media reports, Quickheal had spotted amalware that imitates over 200 apps, including some offered bysome of domestic banks.The malware is distributed through a fake flash playerapp and can ultimately trick the user into sharing his/herlogin details and password for any of the 232 applications, ifthey are present on the device.The cyber security firm asked users not to downloadany apps from third-party stores or links provided inSMSes/emails to keep their credentials safe, according tomedia reports."There is always somebody or the other who is tryingto attack, and that's how this entire world of cyber criminalswork. But given the multilevel securities that we have put inplace, we believe we are extremely capable of defending itwithin our entire financial structure," Madhivanan said.He asserted that in its ten-year history, the bank'smobile banking, which was the first such application to belaunched by any bank, has not "had even one single incident ofa technical breach" which has harmed customers.The incidents which have been faced are due to "socialre-engineering", rather than "technical" faults, he claimed."Our bigger worry has never been on the technicalsecurity part. It's always been on social engineering fraud,where customers are giving away some of this data where theyare cheated by someone masquerading as an Aadhaar person or atelecom person," he said.To check and avoid any mishaps, the bank has a strongsecurity architecture which consists of a chief securityofficer, two network operation centres and a securityoperation centre, he said.The bank has 8 million customers using its mobile app,which is growing fast, he said, adding mobile transactions nowaccount for half of its overall digital transactions and willsoon be overtaking Internet banking."Growth of mobile transactions is much faster thanthe incremental transactions through the Internet. We expectmobile transactions to overtake it and become the new standardwhen it comes to banking transaction," he said.In FY17, it handled Rs 2.4 trillion worth of transactions through mobile banking, which hit Rs 3.1 trillion by October 2017, he said.

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