Hackers from Ukraine became participants in the international cybercrime group Carbanak, which for two years stole about $ 1 billion from more than 100 financial institutions around the world. This robbery became the largest in history, which was discovered in a joint investigation by Europol, Interpol and Kaspersky Lab in 2013, but its results were published yesterday in an official report. In addition to Ukrainians, hackers from Russia, China and a number of other countries took part in the "robbery of the century".
According to NYT, the investigation began with an incident when, at the end of 2013, one of Kiev's ATMs began to spit out money systematically under the feet of passers-by. It turned out that this was the smallest of the bank's problems, which later it was possible to uncover during the investigation. As a result, Kaspersky Lab managed to obtain proof of the theft of $ 300 million from more than 100 banks around the world, but the company's report notes that the total amount of stolen funds can be three times as much.
According to Kaspersky Lab, Carbanak's activities have affected banks, payment systems and other financial institutions from almost 30 countries, including Ukraine. Financial institutions in Russia, the United States, Germany, China, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Romania, France, Spain, Norway, India, Great Britain, Poland, Pakistan, Nepal, Morocco, Iceland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Brazil, Bulgaria and Australia. All this makes this cyber-robbery the largest in history.
Cybergroups used methods specific to targeted attacks. However, unlike many other incidents, criminals stole money directly from banks, and not from users. The largest sums of money were stolen during the invasion of the banking network: for each such raid, cybercriminals stole up to $ 10 million. On average, the robbery of one bank (from infecting the first computer in the corporate network to stealing money and curtailing activities) took two to four months.
The criminal scheme began with the penetration into the computer of one of the employees of the organization through phishing techniques. After the machine was infected with malicious software, the attackers got access to the internal network of the bank, found computers of administrators of money transaction systems and deployed video surveillance over their screens. Thus, the gang knew every detail in the work of the bank's staff and could imitate the usual actions of employees when transferring money to fraudulent accounts.
Ukrainian hackers are not the first to "light up" in such a large-scale robbery. Earlier, 26-year-old Odessite took part in the largest hacking of NASDAQ, within which approximately $ 300 million was stolen. Last year, Ukrainian hackers were accused of robbing thousands of banks around the world - it was our compatriots that formed the backbone of the hacker group that was spreading the most dangerous banking modern Trojan ZeuS. They managed to steal millions of dollars from bank accounts.