Hackers stole more than 2 billion roubles ($31 million) from correspondent accounts at the Russian central bank and from accounts in commercial banks, the bank said on Friday [Dec. 2], the latest example of an escalation of cyber attacks on financial institutions around the globe.
Central bank official Artyom Sychyov discussed the losses at a briefing, saying that the hackers had attempted to steal about 5 billion roubles. He said the figures were the totals recorded stolen, or the target of attempted theft, in cyber attacks over the course of 2016.
Sychyov was commenting on a central bank report released earlier in the day, that told of hackers breaking into accounts there by faking a client’s credentials. The bank provided few other details in its lengthy report.
Financial regulators around the world have recently urged banks to beef up cyber security in the wake of a string of high-profile heists on banks around the world.
Fears about attacks on banks have mounted since February when unknown cyber criminals stole $81 million in funds that Bangladesh’s central bank had on deposit at the New York Fed. Law enforcement agencies around the globe are hunting for the criminals who stole the money using fraudulent wire-transfer requests sent over the SWIFT bank messaging network.
Separately, Russia said on Friday that it had uncovered a plot by foreign spy agencies to sow chaos in the country’s banking system via a coordinated wave of cyber attacks and fake social media reports about banks going bust.
($1 = 63.8300 roubles) (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh and Elena Fabrichnaya; writing by Katya Golubkova and Jim Finkle; editing by Vladimir Soldatkin and David Gregorio)
[Editor’s note: Reuters corrected its original article to show the 2 billion roubles stolen is a combination of money stolen from accounts in central bank and commercial banks, not from central bank alone. It also clarified that the figures were the totals stolen in cyber attacks for the year to date.]
Related:
- Bank of England Beefs Up Cyber Resilience Tests for UK Banks After Tesco Hack
- Tesco Reveals $3M Was Stolen from 9,000 Customers in Recent Cyber Bank Theft
- Tesco Bank’s Cyber Attack Investigated by UK’s National Crime Agency
- Cyber Criminals Steal Money from Nearly 20,000 Customers of UK’s Tesco Bank
- U.S. Seeks Tougher Cybersecurity Standards for Banks
- UK Banks Reluctant to Report Extent of Relentless Cyber Attacks
- SWIFT Expects Cyber Attacks on Banks to Increase
- New York Proposes ‘Flexible’ Cybersecurity Regulation for Insurers, Banks
- EU Members Should Run Stress Tests for Banks’ Cyber Risks: EU Banking Chief
- Cyber Attacks on Financial Firms Up; Ransomware Attacks Way Up: Beazley
- UK Banks Ordered to Update Cyber Security After $81M Bangladesh Bank Heist
- Urgent Action Needed to Tackle Systemic Threat of Cyber Risk: Marsh & TheCityUK
- Bank of England Faces ‘Advanced, Persistent & Evolving’ Cyber Threats
- Malware Used to Steal $80M-Plus in Bangladesh Cyber Bank Heist: Officials
- Cyber Attacks On Banks More Serious Than Public Realizes
Topics Cyber Commercial Lines Russia
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