I received a number of media requests and emails from readers over the weekend to comment on a front-page New York Times story about an organized gang of cybercriminals pulling off “one of the largest bank heists ever.” Turns out, I reported on this gang’s activities in December 2014, although my story ran minus many of the superlatives in the Times piece. The Times’ story, “Bank Hackers Steal Millions Via Malware,” looks at the activities of an Eastern European cybercrime group that Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab calls the “Carbanak” gang. According to Kaspersky, this group deployed malware via phishing scams to get inside of computers at more than 100 banks and steal upwards of USD $300 million — possibly as high as USD $1 billion.
Gang Hacked ATMs from Inside Banks
An organized gang of hackers from Russia and Ukraine has broken into internal networks at dozens of financial institutions and installed malicious software that allowed the gang to drain bank ATMs of cash. While none of the victim institutions were in the United States or Western Europe, experts say the stealthy methods used by the attackers in these heists would likely work across a broad range of western banks.