Hackers and Banks (A Chronicle of Sensational Crimes)

09.02.2016 The recent announcement of the department “K” about the prevention of grand larceny (totaling to over 1.5 milliard roubles) is evidence of unprecedented growth of frauds in the sector of IT technologies. I believe you will find interesting the list of the much-talked-of crimes of this type.

Massive Cyber-Attack

A famous group of hackers, citizens of Russia, China and several European countries, has succeeded to steal 300 million USD at the beginning of last year. More than 100 commercial banks and lending agencies in 30 countries suffered from cyber-attacks in February. The incident is unparalleled in its scope among virtual robberies.

Robbery on New Year’s Eve

The name of the bank which accounts were hacked on the last day of 2015 is unknown. 690 illegal transactions totaled to over 95 million roubles.

Unsuccessful Odyssey of twins

In September 2012 the attention of Russians was attracted to a lawsuit against professional fishers. Having received in illegal way confidential data, twin brothers robbed almost 200 clients of VTB24 and appropriated over 13 million roubles. The family name Popelish of these crooks who received 6-year suspended sentence kept cropping up in mass-media. 900,000-fine was cold comfort for victims.

Restless twins

The famous twins were brought to trial once more. Through 2013 to 2015 they illegally withdrew over 10 million roubles from bank accounts. Clients of Sberbank and VTB24 (to VTB24 crooks are especially attached to) bore damages.

Manipulations with ATMs

Last year the famous organization Group IB noticed growth in theft of great amounts of funds through ATMs. Five large Russian banks suffered losses exceeding 1.1 milliard roubles. In collaboration with MasterCard and Visa a complex system designed for prevention of wide spreading of a new style of robbery was developed.

«Fifth Reich»

Hackers took things a step further – they infected with scumware more than 340,000 smartphones. Software was spread via SMS. It was camouflaged as Adobe Flash Player. During registration trustful customers entered details of a bank card attached to a mobile device. One could already suspect that later all funds disappeared. Before the spring 2015 frauds succeeded to earn over 50 million roubles.