The other day a couple of hoods robbed a Citibank in Midland, Texas, the old fashioned way and made off with a few thousand dollars. One suspected culprit was apprehended almost immediately, thus telegraphing how foolhardy a career choice robbing bank is. The retirement plan isn't so great.
But we're in a new era now where everything is connected to the internet. Often it seems as though the wizards who have foisted this on us didn't think it all the way through. So now we have bank robbers such as the ones described in A ring of cyber-crooks used an unusual trick to steal up to $1 billion from banks around the world.
Their trick involved spear-phishing selected bank employees to get them to open a document that infected the system with malware that allowed the robbers to get into the computer system, look around and figure out how make their own fraudulent transactions look like normal business. Excerpt:
In this way, Kaspersky said, the criminals learned how the bank clerks worked and could mimic their activity when transferring the money.
In some cases, Carbanak inflated account balances before pocketing the extra funds through a fraudulent transaction. Because the legitimate funds were still there, the account holder would not suspect a problem.
Kaspersky said Carbanak also remotely seized control of ATMs and ordered them to dispense cash at a predetermined time, when a gang member would be waiting to collect the money.
It ain't Bonnie and Clyde.
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