Pierluigi Paganini December 03, 2016

It’s official, hackers have stolen 2 billion rubles, roughly 31 million US dollars, from accounts at the Russian central bank.

While I was reporting the news that the FSB unnamed foreign hackers are planning to undermine Russian Banks, the Russian Central Bank confirmed hackers have stolen 2 billion rubles (roughly $31M) in cyber attacks

Central bank official Artyom Sychyov confirmed the incident and added that the hackers had attempted to steal much more, about 5 billion rubles.

“We were lucky to return some of money,” said a Russian central bank spokesperson.

Sychyov was commenting on a central bank report released yesterday by the FSB. The hackers broke into bank accounts by faking a client’s credentials. The bank provided few other details in its lengthy report.

“Hackers stole more than 2 billion rubles ($31 million) from correspondent accounts at the Russian central bank, the bank said on Friday, the latest example of an escalation of cyber attacks on financial institutions around the globe.” reported the Reuters.

At the time I was writing there are no details about the attack.

In September the SWIFT disclosed more attacks against banks worldwide, pressures banks on security and urged member banks to implement the new SWIFT software by November 19.

In the last months, a worrisome string of cyber attacks against banks worldwide through the SWIFT system has alarmed the banking industry. The so-called “SWIFT hackers” have conducted multiple cyber attacks against financial institutions. We reported the successful cyber heists on the Bangladesh bank, against a Ukrainian bank, and the Ecuadorian bank, meanwhile, a Vietnam bank reported to have blocked an ongoing cyber heist.

Stay tuned!

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Cyber heist, Russian Central bank)