UK police foil massive bank theft

[xdir]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4356661.stm

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> Yeron Bolondi was arrested for money laundering and deception

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->Police in London say they have foiled one of the biggest attempted bank thefts in Britain.



The plan was to steal £220m ($423m) from the London offices of the Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui.

Computer experts are believed to have tried to transfer the money electronically after hacking into the bank's systems.

A man has been arrested by police in Israel after the plot was uncovered by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit.

Unit members worked closely with Israeli police.

The investigation was started last October after it was discovered that computer hackers had gained access to Sumitomo Mitsui bank's computer system in London.

They managed to infiltrate the system with keylogging software that would have enabled them to track every button pressed on computer keyboards.

Cyber warning

From that they could learn account numbers, passwords and other sensitive information.

Yeron Bolondi, 32, was seized in Israel after an attempt to transfer £13.9m into an account there.

<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=208 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5></TD><TD class=sibtbg> We have undertaken various measures in terms of security and we have not suffered any financial damage


Takashi Morita
Sumitomo Mitsui



<!-- S ILIN -->Latest coup for hi-tech cops
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->

He has been charged with money laundering and deception, but police say their investigation is continuing. His relationship with the gang who tried to break into the network is unknown.

They have issued a warning for banks and businesses to watch out for cyber criminals.

The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit was launched in April 2001 with responsibility for tracking down the growing range of criminals who operate in cyberspace.

Takashi Morita, head of communications at Sumitomo Mitsui in Tokyo, said the company had not suffered any financial loss as a consequence of the robbery attempt.

He said: "The case is still in the middle of investigation so we cannot comment further.

"We have undertaken various measures in terms of security and we have not suffered any financial damage."

<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=208 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5></TD><TD class=sibtbg> This will be discussed by chief executives and others for some time to come and it will further reinforce the need for corporate asset protection systems


Richard Starnes
Computer security expert

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->Richard Starnes, president of the Information Security Services Association, said: "We have been talking about the doomsday scenario for quite some time and while this was not actualised it shows the magnitude of the threat to companies."

He told the BBC News Website: "This will be discussed by chief executives and others for some time to come and it will further reinforce the need for corporate asset protection systems."

Mr Starnes, who works for Cable & Wireless, said key logging software - which detects every key stroke made by a keyboard and can give away crucial information such as passwords - was easy to obtain and quite simple to insert into a company's computers.

He said: "This is the arms race of this era. Police and criminals are constantly trying to stay one step ahead of each other."<!-- E BO -->

[whatnow]

keyloggers? is that all it takes? I should get a different profession.

thanks for the news xdir

[ABCMan]

saw this on the news earlier

they used a simple inline hardware keylogger, my question is how the hell did they get in to fit it and retrieve it or was it an inside job

[whatnow]

well that's what I thought, I wondered if they must've either hacked in to the network and left keyloggers on which sent the data back out...but the fact that they didn't get traced or noticed is worrying. However if it was an inside job then placing hardware/software keyloggers would've been relitivly easy as who would ever know, they just look like an regular adapter or "invisible" software.

either way it looks like any one with a ebay account and access to secure data can do this stuff...you'd have thought it would be harder to get one than just popping on to ebay wouldn't you???

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...sPageName=WDVW


edit: it's no wonder people get fuked over from doing internet banking in an internet café, anyone can go in there, leave these all over the machines, wait a few days for data to build up and then go back to remove them. Very old techniques still working today...rubbish, but is it stopable?...

[Raptor]

inside job for sure

any bank network admin would spot this shit easy

you wait and see what happens ......

[ABCMan]

that one holds 33,000 keystrokes it says, the one reported to have been used in the bank held 2 million keystrokes

[L4yer Cak3]

inside job for sure

any bank network admin would spot this shit easy

you wait and see what happens ......

But it could of been the network admin which set it all up

[whatnow]

knowing how lax things are untill something bad goes wrong it was probably the cleaners (literally! )

[Legal Eagle]

Hey

There are quite a few software keyloggers/PC Surveillance Systems available, that can be hidden inside a .jpg file and can be pre-configured. When the person opens the .jpg, they see the picture and the software loads in the background and then forces a restart. The user usually just thinks it's a glitch and the software then reports all activity on the PC to an external source.

In fact, the NHTCU and other Law Enforcement departments use some of these products on a covert basis.

Regards

Legal Eagle