Crooks Arrested Over KVM-Based Bank Heist Attempt
judgecorp writes "Twelve men have been arrested over an attempt to take control of computers at a Santander bank branch in London using a stealthily planted KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) switch installed by a bogus maintenance engineer. The men were caught by the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crimes Unit."
Everyone knows if you want to rip off a bank. You need to BE the banker.
That way you get the money. And then the goverment comes and gives you MORE money. Win. Win. No jailtime.
Let's talk about KVM switches..
All Intel upstrem patches are belong to me.
So we need an acronym for keyboard video and mouse now? Really?
This and the NSA incident should really tell everybody that the story of a lone hacker sitting in his basement "hacking the world" is just that: bullshit. ... undertakings. Hacking stuff, either by placing ... once the flow of information gets going you'll notice
It takes always more than one to be effective, be it in the large or small spying business or criminal
hardware or coming directly for the systems is one thing, making money or usable information out of it another. And one "big heist" usually
leads to another, because a larger pool would be nice, wouldn't it? And spying
your customers are always thirsty.
What else is bullshit is all the stuff "preventionists" are telling you. The picture of the barbarian, unwashed hacker hordes rushing you, only to be foiled by stalwart products while you observe like a field marshal from your dashboard is a lie. They have no reason to do that, they go for the weak points. These guys brought their backdoor with autonomous internet access with them, they didn't even try to breach the net - and they used of-the-shelf-products. Which is always annoying, wether it is backdoors or hardware deployed - you don't who dropped it, could be anyone.
So how did they caught? Maybe they got too greedy, maybe did it one time too often - and someone didn't rely on prevention, but investigation.
Should you be bored by this little rant, buy an iKVM switch, throw it at an antivirus marketing guy whilst yelling "Catch this!"
... I was hoping they tried to exploit the bank through a Kernel-based Virtual Machine. Disappointing.
Yes, I do! I find it quite amusing that America was schooled by Putin on exceptionalism.
For a country one who claims to boast its own national exceptionalism and moral superiority. Yet, forgets to mention they are the holders of the largest national debt known to man. If you ask me. I find this fact hardly exceptional or superior ... heck it's not even moral!
'The Metropolitan Police said its "time-critical, dynamic response" had thwarted a "very significant and audacious cyber-enabled offence". '
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24077094
I think there should be a general rule: Anyone who uses the word 'cyber' in a non-sarcastic manner should be ignored.
The article looks like it wasn't written by a tech journalist too, as it contains such obvious errors as 'The device, if operational, would have allowed data and contents of the desktop to be downloaded over the network.' News organizations so often make mistakes in their rush to be the first to break a story - even the BBC.
How where they caught?
Well, he could have easily slipped in an unobstrusive thumbdrive with a key logger in to a back usb port, and collected it back in the next "maintenance" visit! One could imagine a usb device based KVM without cables transmitting data wirelessly. Such devices are very useful, I could stash my tower in a sound proofed cooling enclosure far away and keep my KVM on my desk. So they will be in the market, if they are not already in the market. At that point all the bogus engineer had to do was to slip in an unobstrusive usb device in a back port.
Once the crooks have physical access to the machine, it becomes very difficult to protect against. Once a crook and an insider cooperate it becomes very very difficult to guard against.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
installed KVM as phony IT guy, were arrested and here are their names
this is all the information the article provides. no details of any kind. no picture of the (hopefully stealthy) KVM, how they were caught or anything of any interest at all!
Here's the real scoop:
A man dressed as a "maintenance engineer" (IT guy) claimed to be sent by a some company working for the bank. Then he goes to the bank branch's main server and plugs an external KVM-over-IP box connected to an ethernet to wifi adapter or at least that was the plan. The plan was thwarted at the last minute... no info as to why/how but I'm betting that the server either didn't have a PS/2 port or didn't have VGA output not that it matters without a username and password to login.
A spokesman for Santander insisted that the bogus engineer had not managed to install the device and no customer money was ever at risk.
We are pleased that we have been able, through the robustness of our systems, to prevent the fraud and help the police gather the evidence they needed to make the arrests. Santander operates multiple levels of controls to protect customers' funds and this attack would not have been successful.
Hours after the bogus engineer attempted to fit the device to the computer server, officers from Scotland Yard swooped arresting 12 men on suspicion of conspiracy to steal. As for how they were caught, I think someone just realized there wasn't supposed to be an IT guy there and then the cops got called.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
People with no job conspire and fail in trying to shave off a few millions out of a bank's billions?
Get arrested, thrown in prison for years.
Work for a bank, conspire and succeed in destroying the global economy and cheat your customers out of trillions of dollars?
Get the government to give you even MORE money.
Not saying these guys here should not have been arrested. But the worst crooks in the story are working inside the bank, not outside.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Under what circumstances will Slashdot not pick up this story? Perhaps if....
CrookA calls CrookB on his cel^H^H^Hrotary phone. CrookB asks a bicycle courier outside his building to deliver some building plans across town to CrookC and CrookD.
The next night, they all meet up and get to work hammering down a wall from some parking garage which leads into the vault.
I've just finished development on my new bitchen KVM system!
Wanna give one a try and tell me how you like it? ......
Rick B.
They must have used the device in the link attached to a wifi router. Though the device must be capable of negotiating the firewall like RVNC does. I think the router gave it away.
http://www.hy-line.de/en/company-group/hy-line-computer-components/line-card/lantronix/kvm/
What if you are a political blogger whose keyboard is bugged? The Miniluv can do everything they want against you, and no TOR, I2P, VPN, foreign hosting or full-disk encryption will save you from Room 101.
chase bank out outsourced branches IT to work to a mix of outside contractors / sub contractors.
They should have used Xen or VMware for the financial industry.
The KVM was marked 'Made in China'. They should replaced it with a label saying 'Installed by the NSA'.
Hey, newspaper guy! It's called "Social Engineering" and it's broadly the same as "Con Artistry".