When talking about hackers, it doesn't matter in which country their targets are based because all they want are vulnerable targets that could let them break into
their computers. However, when it comes to their favorite location to take over computer systems, it seems like Australia has something special because Russian hackers are mostly interested in this region of the world. Talking for
ZDNet.com.au, Kimberly Zenz, an iDefence security expert, said that Russian attackers turn their eyes to Australian targets especially due to the small number of banks in the country.
The explanation is pretty simple: when sending emails to the residents of the country, it's more likely to find a client of the bank the hackers attack because there are less banks in the region. And this seems to be obvious because assaulting a country with lots of banks could be quite difficult since residents may own accounts at different banks, others than the one the hackers attack.
And the statement seems to be supported by a new report coming from Australia where the customers of a local bank got phished, but there's no word whether the attackers were living in the country or were coming from Russia. However, the phishing scam was especially intended to lure people on a malicious website which asked for all kinds of private details, including credit card numbers, name and email addresses.
Banks seem to be today's hackers' favorite targets as accounts host important amounts of money which could be easily compromised by attackers in case they find vulnerable computers and naive users. As you know, most of the attempts rely on malicious websites or infected emails which ask users to download a file or visit a webpage, a fact which underlines once again, the idea that hackers would not be able to break into so many service if clients were more concerned about their security.