Data breaches and security incidents are a constant in the headlines these days. Hackers and cyber criminals are motivated by status or money and finding new innovative and more creative attacks to achieve this.
One of them are, Digital Bank robbery - where the thieves didn't need masks and guns to pull off the job, all they need are - Hacking Skills, a computer and the Internet. Another way is Cyber extortion - threat of attack against an enterprise or a bank, coupled with a demand for money to avert or stop the attack.
According to Haaretz news, A Hacker - who is the operator of a biggest botnet malware network in the Israel, has threatens 3 major Israeli banks, i.e. Israel Discount Bank, Bank Yahav and the First International Bank of Israel.
"Bank received an e-mail message threatening that unless they handed over a certain sum in Bitcoins by the end of next week, a list of customers' details would be given to hostile elements."
Banks database, network and websites were not breached in this case, rather the hacker claimed that he holds a huge financial trojan botnet network in Israel that have already infected millions of systems across the nation and collected a massive dump of stolen personal information, passwords, banking information and credit card numbers of 3.7 Million users.
The hacker has demanded the payoff in Bitcoin, a untraceable virtual currency, perfect for blackmailers and cyber criminals. Bitcoin is not backed by any central bank or government and can be transferred "peer to peer" between any two people anywhere.
Banks declined to comment on the report and immediately reported the threat to the Israel Police. According to the source, some of them do not see the threat as serious. Bank of Israel held a meeting on Tuesday on the issue, we will update you soon about their next step with a new article.
Cyber attacks are becoming more and more advanced and sophisticated, more or less any company in the world is on the list of targets to rob. You should keep updating your knowledge about the cyber world to Stay Safe from all threats.
