Pierluigi Paganini December 22, 2013

A group of hackers has threatened Israeli banks to disclose stolen data belonging 3.7 million customers unless the organizations pay up.

The Israel Hayom news revealed that at least three Israeli banks report extortion attempt by hacker demanding payoff in Bitcoin, the criminal threatens the financial institutions to reveal sensitive information of banking customers.

The cyber criminals claim to have stolen the details of 3.7 million customers and they threaten to sell the data on the underground market unless the organizations pay up.

The hacker involved in one of the biggest botnet in the Israel has threatened the 3 major Israeli banks, Israel Discount Bank, Bank Yahav and the First International Bank of Israel.

The banks immediately reported the threat to the Israel Police and Bank of Israel, they received an e-mail message threatening that unless they handed over a certain sum in Bitcoin currency by the end of next week, “a list of customers’ details would be given to hostile elements.”

In time I’m writing there is news regarding a possible data breach occurred to the banks, but the hacker claimed to have gathered the precious information through a powerful financial trojan botnet across Israel composed of millions of systems. According the hacker the botnet collected a massive dump of stolen personal information, credentials, banking information and credit card numbers of 3.7 Million users.

Banks declined to comment the event but security experts don’t believe realistic the threat,  but we must consider that banking is even more target of cyber attacks. Cybercrime is adopting sophisticated techniques and advaced malware to avoid detection and monetize its effort, we have read of a new generation of malware that is able to operate with resilient infrastructure based on P2P protocol and hosted on Tor Network like the last varial of Zeur designed for 64 bit systesm.

The number of security incidents that involve wide audience is increasing, last in order of time is the data breach that suffered the US retailer Target.

Another concerning trend in the cyber criminal ecosystem is the cyber extortion, an illegal practice that is diffusing, malware authors that request the payment of a fee to unlock files encrypted by ransomware (e.g. cryptolocker) or gangs of cybercriminals that threaten private companies, including banks, with cyber attacks like DDoS and requesting the payment of a fee to stop the offensive.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  Cybercrime, Banks)