Cyber-heist
Individuals employed around the world by a sophisticated cyber crime ring stole $45 million from thousands of bank automated teller machines within a matter of hours, using hacked debit-card data, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.
Members of the global criminal organization hacked into two credit card processors and used stolen data to make more than 40,500 withdrawals in 27 countries, during two separate coordinated incidents in December 2012 and February 2013, the Justice Department said.
The government charged eight individuals in New York with participating in the larger scheme by withdrawing $2.8 million in thousands of ATM transactions, in what U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said was the second-biggest bank robbery in the history of New York City.
Lynch said it was likely that the headquarters of the global scheme was located outside the United States and that the current charges focused only on the New York-based cell. Investigators were examining whether other cells were operating elsewhere in the United States, she said.
"In the place of guns and masks, this cyber crime organization used laptops and the Internet. Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City, with the defendants fanning out across Manhattan to steal millions of dollars from hundreds of ATMs in a matter of hours," said Lynch, whose office in Brooklyn, New York, brought the case.
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The case demonstrates the major threat that cyber crime poses to banks around the world. Security experts frequently identify electronic fraud as one of the key challenges facing banks today.
"Hackers only need to find one vulnerability to cause millions of dollars of damage," said Mark Rasch, a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor, based in Bethesda, Maryland.
In the December attack, hackers gained access to an Indian credit card processor that handled prepaid Mastercard Inc debit cards for National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC, or RAKBANK, according to a criminal indictment.
In February, the hackers broke into the system of a U.S.-based credit card processor to steal account numbers for prepaid Mastercard debit cards issued by Bank of Muscat, the indictment said.
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