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Citibank Denies Reported Breach Linked To Russian Gang
alphadogg writes "US authorities are investigating the theft of an estimated tens of millions of dollars from Citibank by criminals using Russian software tailored for the attack, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required to access that link — CNET's coverage here). The security breach at the major US bank was detected mid-year based on traffic from Internet addresses formerly used by the Russian Business Network gang, the WSJ reported today, citing unnamed government sources. The Russian Business Network is a well-known group linked to malicious software, hacking, child pornography, and spam. The FBI is probing the case, the report said. It was not known whether the money had been recovered and a Citibank representative said the company denied any system breach or losses, according to the report."
Article is behind a paywall. Search for it with Google News, and the WSJ will let you read it all.
The reporter was trying to link a bunch of separate things together.
1. Black Energy conducted a DDoS against Citibank, but did not steal tens of millions of dollars from them.
2. Last year, Citi lost tens of millions of dollars from skimmers attached to ATMs.
3. The hacker Cr4sh is the author of Black Energy, but there is no evidence he was involved in the attack on Citi.
There is nothing relating these three incidents other than the wishes of an aggressive reporter wanting to build some kind of story against City; *perhaps* he's trying to pump up a case to make it appear they are risking bailout money. But at least when I type this kind of crap I'm labeling it for what it is: PURE SPECULATION.
John
... the US and UK public are asking for an investigation into the apparent transfer of billions of dollars of public money to major banks. No-one is probing the case and yet the govt and banks are not denying any breach of the political and economic systems.
I honestly thought they were one and the same.
Maybe someone can enumerate for me, the differences between Citibank and a Russian Gang . . .
Rips off governments for millions . . . check
Rips off people for millions . . . check
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This site says Citigroup received 50 billion from the Fed. The little bit that was stolen is just a drop in the bucket. Dillenger probably did better percentage-wise in the 1930's with a gun and some balls.
If as Citibank claims "no losses happened" then how come there was 'tens of millions of dollars' missing? What am I missing here?
The Kuang Grade Mark Eleven Penetration Program is the way to go. But you need a live person at the controls. Not a flatline, because Neuromancer knows his every move in advance.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Cash is replenishable, trust is not as it has to be earned.
Admitting to the theft would probably trigger in-depth audits and increased scrutiny of Citibank operations. THAT might be very, very bad for Citibank.
Let's just handle it on a modified mark-to-market basis. The money used to be here, and if it was still here we wouldn't have lost anything.
If you prefer QM, think of it as Shrodinger's cat - of course, he's still alive - no need to look in that box.
It ain't funny, McGee!
Citibank representative said the company denied any system breach or losses, according to the report.
My web host provider *cough*inmotion*cough* got hacked a couple months ago and they denied it across the board, tried to turn it back on the users by claiming all the accesses were routine FTP connections.
Makes me wonder if denial is the new trend?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
And speaking of PURE SPECULATION, which is what Citi does through it's energy/oil speculating subsidiary, Phibro, everyone knows Citi pissed away all their money by their purchase of all those credit default swaps and other categories of credit derivatives; thereby giving those enormous fortunes to the Robert Rubin family (and the others who are now members of the George W. Obama Administration.....)
I read WSJ article and I had to chuckle. What a poor excuse for a story. It doesn't sound like anyone targeted Citibank. They are one of dozens of other banks who were victimized by a gang of Ukrainian (NOT Russian) criminals. As far as I know, hundreds of small and medium business have been vandalized by the same gang on individuals targeting individual systems with malware. Brian Krebs from Washington Post covered this months ago. WSJ story is a bad knock off without facts and originality.
Brian Krebs from Washington Post covered this months ago
On slashdot, it's considered polite to use the anchor tag.
Let's say it actually was a "Russian Gang" operating out of say, Russia. What can US Gov't agencies do against this? Can they do anything within the law besides call up Russia and tell them to 'take care of it.' It's not like we can drop commandos into Russia and go after them, nor can we launch electronic attacks on this gang (act of futility).
According to the US Constitution, Section 8, Congress has the power to provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.
I see this type of activity as an attack, just because it's two private entities, this IMHO is no different than if SAP tried to hack into Oracle.
Hey Fed, I'm sick of US companies wasting time, money and effort to deal with these people bent on conducting electronic warfare.
As a side note, I wonder how much $$ is wasted in terms of extra capacity (servers, network, CPU, power) is needed by US companies to deal with all this BS (spam, people hacking in etc..) floating around the internet.
I once heard a presentation by a guy at Yahoo who managed a few of their datacenters. When asked about how they deal with DOS attacks his response was that they had more computing capacity then the internet could deliver to them, so they just absorb whatever attacks are sent their way.
Last year Citi sent me a new card, because they said they'd lost three million credit card numbers to thieves. Well, they claimed it was a merchant, but since they wouldn't reveal who it was so that I could cease doing business with them, clearly Citibank is assuming full responsibility.
So what is the attack system used to get "tens of millions of dollars"?
Do they collect 10,000 user names and passwords from personal computer users?
Do they somehow take over a merchant deposit account and transfer funds out of it?
Do they emulate a bank-to-bank transaction and modify the bank-to-bank back end transaction?
They wouldn't find an elephant in a two-meter square room.
It seems they're hiding info, self interests implicated maybe?
Joe Petro, managing director of Citigroup's Security and Investigative services, said, "We had no breach of the system and there were no losses, no customer losses, no bank losses."
Apparently those tens of millions of dollars would have been on holiday somewhere around Cayman Islands, hehehe!
On the other hand, I've found no mention in WSJ article to child pornography. Where did that come from? It only rests to say these thieves are terrorists and are supposed to be linked to al-qaeda.
Losses to online crime of all types exceeded $260 million in the U.S. last year, the FBI estimates.
At least is much less than the amount that was paid to rescue US banks during the last crisis by US people.
"Not just another security collapse...
It's Citibank security collapse."
The Russians did it! The Russians did it!
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup Inc. that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang, according to government officials.
The attack took aim at Citigroup's Citibank subsidiary, which includes its North American retail bank and other businesses. It couldn't be learned whether the thieves gained access to Citibank's systems directly or through third parties.
The attack underscores the blurring of lines between criminal and national-security threats in cyber space. Hackers also assaulted two other entities, at least one of them a U.S. government agency, said people familiar with the attack on Citibank.
The Citibank attack was detected over the summer, but investigators are looking into the possibility the attack may have occurred months or even a year earlier. The FBI and the National Security Agency, along with the Department of Homeland Security and Citigroup, swapped information to counter the attack, according to a person familiar with the case. Press offices of the federal agencies declined to comment.
Joe Petro, managing director of Citigroup's Security and Investigative services, said, "We had no breach of the system and there were no losses, no customer losses, no bank losses." He added later: "Any allegation that the FBI is working a case at Citigroup involving tens of millions of losses is just not true."
Citigroup is currently 27%-owned by the federal government.
The threat was initially detected by U.S. investigators who saw suspicious traffic coming from Internet addresses that had been used by the Russian Business Network, a Russian gang that has sold hacking tools and software for accessing U.S. government systems. The group went silent two years ago, but security experts say its alumni have re-emerged in smaller attack groups.
Security officials worry that, beyond stealing money, hackers could try to manipulate or destroy data, wreaking havoc on the banking system. When intruders get into one bank, officials say, they may be able to blaze a trail into others.
Last month, a federal indictment in Atlanta named eight alleged Russian and Eastern European hackers, most still at large, who prosecutors say broke into a U.S. unit of Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008 and stole $9 million from ATMs in 280 cities world-wide in a matter of hours. RBS cooperated with investigators and ensured that its customers were reimbursed.
Losses to online crime of all types exceeded $260 million in the U.S. last year, the FBI estimates. Attacks on corporations are "at an epidemic level," former White House cyber-security director Melissa Hathaway said recently.
U.S. banks have generally been loath to disclose computer attacks for fear of scaring off customers. In part this is an outgrowth of an experience Citibank had in 1994, when it revealed that a Russian hacker had stolen more than $10 million from customer accounts. Competitors swooped in to try to steal the bank's largest depositors. Citibank said at the time that it was able to recover most of the money and that the attack didn't put customer funds at risk.
The new attack targeting Citibank highlights the growing sophistication and threat posed by overseas criminal networks. "There were a couple of days of struggling," said one person familiar with the attack. "There were some sophisticated elements that made it hard to block."
Among weapons the hackers used, according to people familiar with the case, was a small army of infected computers commanded by software called Black Energy. Hackers use Black Energy primarily to block access to Web sites. Somebody used it during Russia's brief 2008 war with Georgia to shut down Georgian government and bank Web sites. Someone also used it in 2007 to block government and bank Web sites in Estonia and to attack the Web site of a political foe of Vladimir Putin, then Russia's president and now its prime minister.
Black Energy was w
The FBI is probing the case, the report said. It was not known whether the money had been recovered and a Citibank representative said the company denied any system breach or losses, according to the report.
There was no system breach! And the money was probably recovered anyways!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I find it interesting that the attribute 5 things to this "Russian"
business network.
5 is an occult power number for encumbering the help of Gnosticism's 5
dark evil demi-urges that are accredited with creating this world.
The bankers are masters of deception and occult hand waving. Who else
could conjure up money out of thin air for you to buy your house with
and then enslave you to pay the sum back times 3? May the bankers be
fully exposed and bear the shame and may they seek our forgiveness on
their knees. May we never, ever be deceived financially by the
Knights of Malta, the Masons, The Catholic Church or any other secret
society / religion which seeks to control our minds with occult
practices to enslave us.
Ah, that felt good to get off my chest.
- -Joey
1)No breach? Like they'd tell us the truth anyways
2) Cause Chaos in the banking system? - they can do that perfectly well themselves.
3) No money lost? well you managed to lose over 60 billion alone last year so forgive me if I dont trust your record so far.
4) ?
5) Profit - claim the insurance for the stolen funds from the Government.
What's wrong with rabbit pellets?