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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!
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.
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.
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?
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.