International Hacking Group Steals $300 Million – Global Digital Banking System Not Secure
By: GoldCore
GoldSeek.com
Monday, 16 February 2015
– Sophisticated “Ocean’s 11″ style heist is one of the largest in history
– Hackers remotely accessed bank computers to manipulate accounts and A.T.M.s.
– Banking groups make no comment
– Details expose incredible systemic vulnerability
An international group of cyber criminals have stolen at least $300,000,000 from over 100 banking and financial institutions in 30 different countries across the world – in a heist that has been described as “much more ‘Ocean’s 11′” than “Bonnie and Clyde” by the company investigating the theft.
Banks in Switzerland, the US, Japan, the Netherlands and particularly Russia were targeted in the past two years.
An investigation into the attacks – which was conducted by Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cyber-security company – began following an incident in Kiev where an A.T.M. started issuing cash spontaneously in 2013.
Kaspersky Lab found the bank’s security system to be drastically compromised when employees opened e-mails purporting to come from their colleagues. The New York Times reports,
“The bank’s internal computers, used by employees who process daily transfers and conduct bookkeeping, had been penetrated by malware that allowed cybercriminals to record their every move.”
“The malicious software lurked for months, sending back video feeds and images that told a criminal group — including Russians, Chinese and Europeans — how the bank conducted its daily routines, according to the investigators.”
The investigation uncovered – though it could not identify – a global network of cyber-criminals using false bank accounts at JP Morgan Chase in the US and Agricultural Bank of China. The figure of $300 million is a conservative estimate and Kaspersky Lab speculate that the true figure may be closer to $900 million.
The malware “allowed the hackers to crawl across a bank’s network until they found employees who administered the cash transfer systems or remotely connected A.T.M.s.”
“The goal was to mimic their activities,” the NYT reports a Kaspersky lab investigator as saying. “That way, everything would look like a normal, everyday transaction,”
Therefore – because no individual “transaction” ever exceeded $10 million and because they were executed from within the target bank’s own system – they went undetected for two years.
The Rest…HERE
