bank hacking | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A U.S. court on Thursday sentenced a 37-year-old Russian to 12 years in prison for perpetrating an international hacking campaign that resulted in the heist of a trove of personal information from several financial institutions, brokerage firms, financial news publishers, and other American companies. Andrei Tyurin was  charged  with computer intrusion, wire fraud, bank fraud, and illegal online gambling offenses, and for his role in one of the largest thefts of U.S. customer data from a single financial institution in history, which involved the personal information of more than 80 million J.P. Morgan Chase customers. Besides the investment bank, some of the other major targets of the hacks were E*Trade, Scottrade, and the Wall Street Journal. Tyurin, who carried out the extensive hacking from his home in Moscow between 2012 to mid-2015, is believed to have netted over $19 million in criminal proceeds as part of his intrusion schemes. In one such instance of security f...

Threat actors have been discovered distributing a new credential stealer written in AutoHotkey (AHK) scripting language as part of an ongoing campaign that started early 2020. Customers of financial institutions in the US and Canada are among the primary targets for credential exfiltration, with a specific focus on banks such as Scotiabank, Royal Bank of Canada, HSBC, Alterna Bank, Capital One, Manulife, and EQ Bank. Also included in the list is an Indian banking firm ICICI Bank. AutoHotkey  is an open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows aimed at providing easy hotkeys for macro-creation and software automation that allows users to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application. The multi-stage infection chain commences with a malware-laced Excel file that's embedded with a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)  AutoOpen  macro, which is subsequently used to drop and execute the downloader client script ("adb.ahk") via a legitimate portable AHK...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Europol, along with the Spanish and the Romanian national police, has arrested 26 individuals in connection with the theft of over €3.5 million ($3.9 million) by hijacking people's phone numbers via SIM swapping attacks. The law enforcement agencies arrested 12 and 14 people in Spain and Romania, respectively, as part of a joint operation against two different groups of SIM swappers, Europol said . The development comes as SIM swapping attacks are emerging as one of the biggest threats to telecom operators and mobile users alike. The increasingly popular and damaging hack is a clever social engineering trick used by cybercriminals to persuade phone carriers into transferring their victims' cell services to a SIM card under their control. The SIM swap then grants attackers access to incoming phone calls, text messages, and one-time verification codes (or one-time passwords ) that various websites send via SMS messages as part of the two-factor authentication (2FA) proc...

UniCredit, an Italian global banking and financial services company, announced today that it suffered a security incident that leaked some personal information belonging to at least 3 million of its domestic customers. Officially founded in 1870, UniCredit is Italy's biggest banking and financial services and one of the leading European commercial banks with more than 8,500 branches across 17 countries. What happened? — Though UniCredit did not disclose any details on how the data incident happened, the bank did confirm that an unknown attacker has compromised a file created in 2015 containing three million records relating only to its Italian customers. What type of information was compromised? — The leaked data contains personal information of 3 million customers, including their: Names Cities Telephone numbers Email addresses What type of information was not compromised? — Unicredit confirmed that the compromised user records did not include any other perso...

Silence APT , a Russian-speaking cybercriminal group, known for targeting financial organizations primarily in former Soviet states and neighboring countries is now aggressively targeting banks in more than 30 countries across America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Active since at least September 2016, Silence APT group's most recent successful campaign was against Bangladesh-based Dutch-Bangla Bank, which lost over $3 million during a string of ATM cash withdrawals over a span of several days. According to a new report Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Group-IB shared with The Hacker News, the hacking group has significantly expanded their geography in recent months, increased the frequency of their attack campaigns, as well as enhanced its arsenal. The report also describes the evolution of the Silence hacking group from "young and highly motivated hackers" to one of the most sophisticated advanced persistent threat (APT) group that is now posing threats to bank...

The European Central Bank (ECB) confirmed Thursday that it had been hit by a cyberattack that involved attackers injecting malware into one of its websites and potentially stealing contact information of its newsletter subscribers. Headquartered in Germany, the European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the 19 European Union countries which have adopted the euro and is itself responsible for supervising the data protection practices of the banking system across these countries. In an official statement published Thursday, the ECB said unknown "unauthorized parties" had managed to breach its Banks' Integrated Reporting Dictionary (BIRD) website, which was hosted by a third-party provider, eventually forcing the bank to shut down the site. Launched in 2015, BIRD is a joint initiative of the Eurosystem to the euro zone's central banks and the banking system, which provides banks with a precise description of the data that aims to help reporting agents e...

Ukrainian Police have this week busted out two separate groups of hackers involved in carrying out DDoS attacks against news agencies and stealing money from Ukrainian citizens, respectively. According to the authorities, the four suspected hackers they arrested last week , all aged from 26 to 30 years, stole more than 5 million Hryvnia (around 178,380 USD) from the bank accounts of Ukrainian citizens by hacking into their computers. The suspects carried out their attacks by scanning vulnerable computers on the Internet and infecting them with a custom Trojan malware to take full remote control of the systems. The group then apparently enabled key-logging on the infected computers in an attempt to capture banking credentials of victims when the owners of those infected computers fill in that information on any banking site or their digital currency wallet. Once getting a hold on the victims banking and financial data, the attackers logged into their online banking accounts ...

The US-CERT has released a joint technical alert from the DHS, the FBI, and Treasury warning about a new ATM scheme being used by the prolific North Korean APT hacking group known as Hidden Cobra . Hidden Cobra, also known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace, is believed to be backed by the North Korean government and has previously launched attacks against a number of media organizations, aerospace, financial and critical infrastructure sectors across the world. The group had also reportedly been associated with the WannaCry ransomware menace that last year shut down hospitals and big businesses worldwide, the SWIFT Banking attack in 2016, as well as the Sony Pictures hack in 2014. Now, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of the Treasury have released details about a new cyber attack, dubbed " FASTCash ," that Hidden Cobra has been using since at least 2016 to cash out ATMs by compromising the bank server. FASTCash Hack...

Security researchers at Kaspersky Labs have uncovered a new, complex malware campaign that has been targeting customers of several Mexican banking institutions since at least 2013. Dubbed Dark Tequila , the campaign delivers an advanced keylogger malware that managed to stay under the radar for five years due to its highly targeted nature and a few evasion techniques. Dark Tequila has primarily been designed to steal victims' financial information from a long list of online banking sites, as well as login credentials to popular websites, ranging from code versioning repositories to public file storage accounts and domain registrars. The list of targeted sites includes "Cpanels, Plesk, online flight reservation systems, Microsoft Office 365, IBM Lotus Notes clients, Zimbra email, Bitbucket, Amazon, GoDaddy, Register, Namecheap, Dropbox, Softlayer, Rackspace, and other services," the researchers say in a blog post . The malware gets delivered to the victims' comp...

Security researchers have uncovered a previously undetected group of Russian-speaking hackers that has silently been targeting Banks, financial institutions, and legal firms, primarily in the United States, UK, and Russia. Moscow-based security firm Group-IB published a 36-page report on Monday, providing details about the newly-disclosed hacking group, dubbed MoneyTaker , which has been operating since at least May 2016. In the past 18 months, the hacking group is believed to have conducted more than 20 attacks against various financial organisations—stolen more than $11 Million and sensitive documents that could be used for next attacks. According to the security firm, the group has primarily been targeting card processing systems, including the AWS CBR (Russian Interbank System) and SWIFT international bank messaging service (United States). " Criminals stole documentation for OceanSystems' FedLink card processing system, which is used by 200 banks in Latin America...

A Taiwanese bank has become the latest to fall victim to hackers siphoning off millions of dollars by targeting the backbone of the world financial system, SWIFT. SWIFT, or Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunication, is a global financial messaging system that thousands of banks and commercial organizations across the world use to transfer billions of dollars every day. Hackers reportedly last week managed to steal almost $60 Million from Far Eastern International Bank in Taiwan by planting malware on the bank's servers and through the SWIFT interbank banking system. According to Taiwanese state-owned news agency Central News Agency, most of the stolen money has now been recovered, with only $500,000 remaining, and authorities have made two arrests in connection with the bank cyber-heist. Far Eastern on Friday admitted that some unknown hackers managed to install malware on computers and servers within its organization, and most crucially, onto a SWIFT terminal emplo...

A 29-year-old Russian-born, Los Angeles resident has been sentenced to over nine years in prison for running botnets of half a million computers and stealing and trafficking tens of thousands of credit card numbers on exclusive Russian-speaking cybercriminal forums. Alexander Tverdokhlebov was arrested in February, pleaded guilty on March 31 to wire fraud and on Monday, a federal court sentenced him to 110 months in prison. According to court documents , Tverdokhlebov was an active member of several highly exclusive Russian-speaking cybercriminal forums largely engaged in money laundering services, selling stolen sensitive data, and malware tools since at least 2008. Tverdokhlebov offered several illegal services on these underground forums, including the exchange of tools, services and stolen personal and financial information. The hacker also operated several botnets – a network of compromised ordinary home and office computers that are controlled by hackers and can be us...

Hackers targeted at least 8 ATMs in Russia and stole $800,000 in a single night, but the method used by the intruders remained a complete mystery with CCTV footage just showing a lone culprit walking up to the ATM and collecting cash without even touching the machine. Even the affected banks could not find any trace of malware on its ATMs or backend network or any sign of an intrusion. The only clue the unnamed bank's specialists found from the ATM's hard drive was — two files containing malware logs. The log files included the two process strings containing the phrases: "Take the Money Bitch!" and "Dispense Success." This small clue was enough for the researchers from the Russian security firm Kaspersky, who have been investigating the ATM heists, to find malware samples related to the ATM attack. In February, Kaspersky Labs reported that attackers managed to hit over 140 enterprises, including banks, telecoms, and government organizations, in th...

More than a hundred banks and financial institutions across the world have been infected with a dangerous sophisticated, memory-based malware that's almost undetectable, researchers warned. Newly published report by the Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab indicates that hackers are targeting banks, telecommunication companies, and government organizations in 40 countries, including the US, South America, Europe and Africa, with Fileless malware that resides solely in the memory of the compromised computers. Fileless malware was first discovered by the same security firm in 2014, has never been mainstream until now. Fileless malware is a piece of nasty software that does not copy any files or folder to the hard drive in order to get executed. Instead, payloads are directly injected into the memory of running processes, and the malware executes in the system's RAM. Since the malware runs in the memory, the memory acquisition becomes useless once the system gets reboot...

In what considered to be the largest system hack in the country's history and a massive attack on the financial sector, several banks in Poland have been infected with malware. What's surprising? The source of the malware infection is their own financial regulator, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) -- which, ironically, is meant to keep an eye out for the safety and security of financial systems in Poland. During the past week, the security teams at several unnamed Polish banks discovered malicious executables on the workstations of several banks. The KNF confirmed that their internal systems had been compromised by someone " from another country, " although no specifications were provided. After downloads of suspicious files that were infecting various banking systems had been discovered on the regulator's servers, the KNF decided to take down its entire system " in order to secure evidence. " Here's what happened: An ...

Law enforcement authorities from Europe and Russia have arrested five members of an international cyber criminal gang for stealing $3.2 million cash from ATMs using malware. Three of the suspects, Andrejs Peregudovs (41), of Latvia, Niklae Penkov (34) of Moldova, and Mihail Colibaba (30) of Romania, were arrested in Taiwan by the Taiwanese Criminal Investigation Bureau last summer, have already been sentenced to 5 years in prison for their role in a massive ATM heist operation, involving 22 individuals from 6 countries. The European-based cyber criminal gang used a variety of different hacking techniques to infect ATMs with malware and force them to dispense cash. According to Europol that began its investigation in early 2016, the gang used spear-phishing emails containing malicious attachments to target bank employees and penetrate the bank's internal networks. From there, the cyber crooks then located and hacked into the network of ATMs from the inside, and used a m...

A Russian computer hacker wanted by the FBI on hacking allegations was arrested and jailed in Spain earlier this week, while a decision on his extradition to the United States has yet to be made. The Guardia Civil, Spanish law enforcement agency officers, have detained 32-year-old Stanislav Lisov at Barcelona–El Prat Airport based on an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol at the request of the FBI. Lisov is arrested on suspicion of creating and operating the NeverQuest Banking Trojan , a nasty malware that targeted financial institutions across the world and caused an estimated damage of $5 Million. The arrest was made after U.S. intelligence agencies found that Russian hackers were behind the November 2016 election hacks that possibly influenced the presidential election in Donald Trump's favor. However, Spanish police made an official statement, saying that the FBI had requested the arrest of Lisov after an investigation that started in 2014. NeverQues...

One of the FBI's most wanted hackers who was behind the largest theft of financial data has finally been arrested at the JFK airport in New York. Joshua Samuel Aaron is accused of being part of a hacking group that attacked several major financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase , and according to the officials, which was "the largest theft of user data from a U.S. financial institution in history." Aaron was believed to have been living as a fugitive in Moscow, Russia after being charged with hacking crimes in 2015, which exposed the personal information of more than 100 Million people. On June 2015, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Aaron by the United States District Court, and the FBI and US secret service agents arrested him upon his arrival at the JFK airport in NY, announced the US Department of Justice. "Aaron allegedly worked to hack into the networks of dozens of American companies, ultimately leading to the largest theft of person...

Almost 20,000 Tesco Bank customers have had their money stolen from their accounts after the banking arm of UK's biggest retailer fall victim to a hacking attack this weekend. As a result of the hack, Tesco Bank has frozen online transactions in an attempt to protect its customers from, what it described as, the " online criminal activity. " However, customers can still use their debit and credit cards for cash withdrawals and card-based payments. Tesco Bank has not disclosed any details of the cyber attack or how accounts had been compromised, but Benny Higgins, chief executive of Tesco, confirmed that the hack affected 40,000 of its 136,000 accounts, half of which had already been used to withdraw money fraudulently over the weekend. The bank would not disclose the total amount stolen from the accounts, but confirmed that the amount stolen was a " big number but not a huge number. " If you have been affected by this incident, don't worry! Higgins has apo...

Thailand has suffered its first ATM Hack! An Eastern European gang of criminals has stolen over 12 Million Baht (approximately US$350,000) from a total of 21 ATMs in Bangkok and other five provinces by hacking a Thai bank's ATM network; police said Wednesday The Central Bank of Thailand (BoT) has issued a warning to all commercial banks about security flaws in roughly 10,000 ATMs that were exploited to steal cash from the machines. The warning came shortly after the state-owned Government Savings Bank (GSB) shut down approximately 3,000 of their ATMs following an ongoing police investigation into the recent hack in which hackers were able to infect many its cash machines with malware. GSB found that millions of Thailand Baht were stolen between August 1 and 8 from 21 ATMs across the provinces of Bangkok, Phuket, Chumphon, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Phetchaburi, and Surat Thani, the Bangkok Post reports. The hackers made over 12.29 Million Thailand Baht (US$346,000) by inser...