Slashdot Mirror
Keylogging Used To Catch Bank Crackers
An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that the British police National High Tech Crime Unit has foiled an attempted fraud by hackers using keylogging software. The London branch of the Sumitomo Mitsui bank of Japan was the target, and a person has been arrested in Israel after being identified as the recipient of an attempted electronic transfer of UKP13.9m."
The crooks were the ones using the keyloggers, not the people who caught them!!!!!!
Man, trying to get into bank records? You know everything is logged somehow. It scares me to think about 2 things... 1, life in prison, and, 2, with that much money, it draws suspicion, so, you really can't spend it.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
Um.. yeah, this article synopsis would be wrong.
:)
From the article it links to:
They managed to infiltrate the system with keylogging software that would have enabled them to track every button pressed on computer keyboards.
The hackers were attempting to use keylogging software.. there's nothing in the bbc article whatsoever about how the police caught them, let alone if they were caught using keylogging software (which is what the synopsis says).
Apparantly, not even the editors read slashdot stories
on the guys face when they busted him. 13.9 million *poof* gone.
Headline is misleading - it's the crackers that used keylogging software, not the police.
How do you manage to get key-logging software onto a bank system without physical access?
Is this more examples of social engineering, or would this have required physical access to the computers? [ I'm assuming here that the general bank computers aren't all on the interweb ]
Scary as hell that someone (almost) managed to do this.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A quick English lesson:
"BBC News is reporting that the British police National High Tech Crime Unit has foiled an attempted fraud by hackers using keylogging software." - This means the hackers are using keylogging software
Note the addition of commas: "BBC News is reporting that the British police National High Tech Crime Unit has foiled an attempted fraud, by hackers, using keylogging software." - This means the police are using keylogging software
The editor of the article is CORRECT!
With the PATRIOT act, I wouldn't be surprised if the DHS started catching people for various crimes using keyloggers. It is only a matter of time before big brother is among us.
Nice trick, but how much money does that number of unbounded knapsack problems represent?
Or did you mean GBP?
This Like That - fun with words!
The ambiguous story description could be interpreted to mean either that the crackers installed the keylogger, or that they were caught by keyloggers. Any sensible reader would know that the crackers probably weren't caught by keyloggers, because they'd already have too much access by that point. But even just reading the story shows that their attack was by keylogger, not their capture.
Now it's obvious: Slashdot submission approvers (staff "authors" who vet the submission queue, to approve stories for publication) just read the text, and decide whether the story is interesting. They don't click the links, they don't think about whether anything makes sense. It really looks like Slashdot's submitters are higher quality than the editors who decide what to publish. And even worse, the editors seem to have the quality of a lower tier of Slashdot readers: grab the most inflammatory interpretation of a post, and run with it - without regard to the facts, or even just the story itself.
For all Slashdot's championing of the "open" community, we know very little of how the editorial process works. How many editors? Do they know each other? See each other, or work remotely? Is there an editorial policy, written or by "rolling consensus"? Are their criteria? What's the process like? With the published Slashcode so old, there's no way to know details about the queue process even by looking at "the" software. So what goes on there behind the curtain?
--
make install -not war
From article
The plan was to steal £220m ($423m) from the London offices of the Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui.
and looks like they only got 13.9 mil out but was were busted trying to get in in Israel
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.
So bad guys try to rob london office of japanese bank, by moving money to israel. This is a great example of an international crime, I almost expect a picture of Tom Cruise or something.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Someone in Israel, breaking into a branch of a Japanese bank, stealking British pounds. Well, theres some multiculturism for you.
This article would've scared the crap out of me if I hadn't already sent all my money to a Nigerian Prince.
Once I get the millions in cash I've been promised, I'll be sure to keep it away from any keyboards.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I have a suggestion: how about a rating for editors? If editors fuck up too often others should be given the chance to do the job properly.
This is just getting too embarrasing and it's damaging Slashdot's reputation.
And yes I must be new here.
Doesn't make it any less true.
I fail to understand how such thing is possible, and I would appreciate explanations.
For example, if someone gets my bank account user/pass and logs into my bank account, transferring all my money into his account. When I see this, I will sure call my bank saying that this was an unauthorized transaction, and this transaction should be void, no? Besides, the thief reveal himself by specifying the destination account, no?
perception is reality
attempted electronic transfer of UKP13.9m
Sorry if this is in any way pedantic - just FYI since I used to work in a capital markets trading environment...
The abbreviation in most currency markets is not UKP, it's GBP, for Great Britain Pounds.
To quote from a handy refernce page:
ISO 4217 (Codes for the Representation of Currencies and Funds) defines three-letter abbreviations for world currencies. The general principle used to construct these abbreviations is to take the two-letter abbreviations defined in ISO 3166 (Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries) and append the first letter of the currency name (e.g., USD for the United States Dollar).
A non-official site's list is at: http://www.jhall.demon.co.uk/currency/by_country.
The official 4217 list of currency codes is at http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/c
The official ISO 3166 Country codes list is at:
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
the editors seem to have the quality of a lower tier of Slashdot readers: grab the most inflammatory interpretation of a post, and run with it
Which means more page views, therefore more advertising revenue.
You can't take the sky from me...
13.9 million GBP is about 26.7 million USD.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
without Bruce Willis? Amazing.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
It's a matter of operator precedence being poorly defined in English, leading to the ambiguity known as a 'dangling modifier'.
Parentheses could have solved the problem:But parentheses aren't used like that in natural language. In English the right way to do it would be more like this:The 'who' strongly binds the entity before it to the entity after it, indicating that 'using keyloggers' is a predicate of 'hackers'. Thus the modifier, now tightly bound, dangles no more.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The article includes its own title. Unless this is changed to 'Keylogging Used By Caught Bank Crackers' it remains incorrect.
Could very well be exactly correct. What if the UserID/Password/Login was a honeypot? A sting operation where several bank employees were given access to seperate lists of logins? Then follow through on who had access to which ID, and whom it was eventually used by?
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
I think I'll ask my bank to call me before authorizing every transaction > 1000$ then (I hope it's possible)! How come someone with millions in bank wouldn't take such an arrangement with his bank?
perception is reality
How do these people get caught even before they transfer money anywhere? Do they brag abut it? Forget to route the connection through a bunch of hacked computers in Groovefunkistan? Maybe some other way?
from the BBC "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. " Sounds like it was the criminals using the software to me! RikF ---- Life begins at 5500 rpm
In Soviet Russia you own your cat
Basically if anyone RTFA the summary is incorrect. The robbers used key logging software, not the police.
If I type my password into a txt file surrounded by a bunch of gibberish, i.e.
diowengiw03821-13kd98password8990830209keivli
Would key-logging software be able to find my password if I cut and paste the relevant data into the appropriate field when I want to enter the password?
Basically, where does the key-logging software sniff the bits? Is it off the bus from the keyboard to the processor, or does it sniff it off the processor?
Just curious
Creative parsing on your part cannot save you.
The title "Keylogging Used To Catch Bank Crackers" is indisputably wrong, no matter how you parse it.
Furthermore, you have introduced your own parsing bias in the first non-comma sentence. The fact is the non-comma sentence does not have one difinitive meaning, and you are just telling us what it means through your assumed meaning.
The fact is you cannot indisputably say that the word "using" applies to the hackers and not the Crime Unit - the only thing supporting that interpretation is the adjacency between hackers and using, and as you illustrate with commas, the sentence can be parsed without commas such that the using applies to the Crime Unit.
It's like saying "Criminal killed her using steak knife". In that sentence you cannot know whether I meant the criminal used the steak knife, or the woman was cutting her steak using her steak knife when she was killed with, say, a bullet from the criminal's gun.
So, if you take this ambiguous sentence, and combine that with the indisputably wrong title of "Keylogging Used To Catch Bank Crackers", then you cannot come to your conclusion that the editor of the article is correct.
the roland piquepaille method...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I recently deposited a fairly large check at my bank. The check, the result of a cash-out refinance of my mortgage, was directly from another bank. I didn't have access to the funds for 5-7 business days. Obviously, this is in an effort to defeat fraud attempts.
So, wouldn't it stand to reason that any large transfers of funds (even electronic) would be followed up before they were made? I mean, even if the bank president authorized a $20M transfer, would there be some sort of mandatory, signature in blood, or phone call or something? Or a holding period?
I just can't believe that this type of transaction could be authorized electronically without some sort of personal verification. How many times is a $20M transfer of funds to a single individual account going to happen, even at the largest bank?
Gosh, maybe I should quit my IT job and try to become a bank president...in Switzerland or the Caymen Islands.
From the arcticle: ... and later:
"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."
"[Bank Executive] 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."
So the break in goes back to October, yet nothing has been taken in the last five months?
The whole story has not been told...
I went to http://www.nhtcu.org/, and all I see is a blank page. After a while, I decided to view the source. Damn Shockwave, without even a little "Skip Intro" link.
I'm going to eat some peanuts.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Well, a fair number of folks have gotten away with all sorts of things and enver been caught.
The ones who do get caught...especially violent criminals like BTK, Ted Bundy, etc.,...have personality deficits that let their egos get them caught.
"Hmmm...I just murdered someone and wasn't immediately caught. I know! I'll send a cryptic letter to the police! That's a great idea!"
Likewise with robbers suddenly driving a Jag. DOH!
There are tons of folks who commit crimes everyday and are NEVER caught. They've learned to steal (or worse)under the radar of society.
They practice "conformal modality" in that they draw no more attention to themselves than say the mailman or meter reader. Think about that for a minute; if you had to describe either of those people right this instant, you couldn't come close.
BU-HA-HA-HA! (evil Shadow laugh)
By the logic of this responses to the article this means either
1) All the article posting is done by contractors in India, OR
2) Articles to view in India are posted by contractors.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
it's about 156 million Icelandic Kronas.
Now let's hear hear from everyone else!
My other UID is 1337
The currency is GBP. There is no such thing as 'UKP'. Could there be more factual errors in one paragraph?
Pardon me. I just thought it was humorous that you said "Sniff the bits".
By that logic, mm should be "meter meter" or meters squared. But it's not, it's defined to mean millimeter. When you use m in the context of a quantity as opposed to a length, everyone knows it means million. The reason people just use m instead of M in those cases is because at the end of a word, people are more accustomed to using a non-capital letter. Anyway, the way people should use things doesn't always line up with the way they actually do.
My other first post is car post.
According the xe.com, the international symbol for the pound sterling is actually GBP (for Great Britain Pound), not UKP as commonly denoted.
Same for CAD for Canadian dollars, but it's frequently listed (incorrectly) as
Cdn $
but once the thing is done, they have all the time until you die to catch you.
what about the statute of limitations?
What about the billions Saddam Hussein stole from Iraq? Most never recoved. There were a few billion withdrawn in *cash* from the national bank in Iraq before the latest war.
err, *IF* the law-enforcement agency - ie British Police, *were* using keylogging software , then how is that different to phone-tapping - which is not admissable in a UK court- ?
He told the BBC News Website...
/. things all the time, but it doesn't listen for some reason.
How does one tell a website something? I tell
Inject.
All the keyloggers I've ever heard of either (in hardware) sniff the PS/2 or USB port of your keyboard, as you type; or (in software) they read the key buffer.
.. in affiliation with Slashdot. Looks like a real editor still has a place in this world.
Screenshot from Google News
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Parasitic Jew
All shockwave, not even a 'download shockwave plugin' link for us mere mortals??!!
I guess the National High Tech Crime Unit are too 'High Tech' to make their website accessible...
charlie harvey's website
apart from being a unit of the police