Slashdot Mirror
Massive Hacking Ring Stole Data From 100 Million Bank Customers (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Court documents unsealed yesterday tie together cybersecurity breaches at several different banks and financial institutions as being caused by the same group of criminals. "Hackers and conspirators in more than a dozen countries generated hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds on pump-and-dump stock schemes and particularly lucrative online gambling, prosecutors said. From 2012 to mid-2015, the suspects and their co-conspirators successfully manipulated dozens of publicly traded stocks, sent misleading pitches to clients of banks and brokerages whose e-mail addresses they'd stolen, and profited by using trading accounts set up under fake names, prosecutors said." The attacks were spread across 75 different companies in nations across the globe, and included collusion with corrupt government officials who ignored the problem. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said, "By any measure, the data breaches at these firms were breathtaking in scope and in size."
Maybe all these hacks weren't related to mobile devices, but I'm really surprised anyone would use their mobile phone for banking until there are none of these kinds of issues.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Are they also responsible for the sudden surge and fall of the Bitcoin value in the last week or so? It went up to USD$475 before falling down to USD$325.
Fight for your bitcoins!
Its a good thing we have regulations in place to keep banks from getting too big.
Otherwise you could hack hundreds of millions of accounts all at once.
...Aren't these people just "Researchers" looking to expose vulnerabilities?
It's probably in the prosecutors' interest to portray the suspects as a "ring" or "criminal enterprise", but how sure are we that this isn't just the hardcore criminal equivalent of Anonymous? Do a bunch guys chatting online and exchanging info about security weaknesses already constitute a conspiracy?
Greed gets you every time.
I'm a Chase customer, but haven't lost any money. Why? I don't speculate, nor gamble, nor invest in schemes with guaranteed high rates of investment.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Sounds like they didn't pay their criminal financier union dues. Otherwise it reads like any other bank exec resume.
...within the stock markets tends to explain why we should perhaps not give a shit about crooks stealing from crooks.
Sadly, the criminals we put in charge of the banking system make this kind of corrupt activity look like amateur night at the local karaoke bar.
A bit of stupidity combined with that greed.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Only reading the headline: They make "Hacking Rings" now? Are they like Smart Watches? "Don't bring that ring anywhere near my computer, Bob, I hear it steals bank data."
This is quite a cover up for all the Wall Street swindling and price and interest rate (See Libor) manipulation that's going on. It should keep the prosecutors away from the real criminals, the banks themselves.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
At what point do we apply the death penalty to crimes of this magnitude?
"They colluded with corrupt international bank officials who willfully ignored its criminal nature..."
Title corrected for accuracy ..
If these thieves worked for JP Morgan, Deutche Bank, Lloyds. etc, and done the exact same thing, they would not have even been investigated nor would the public had ever known.
You just have to be the right kind of thief (one with an MBA).
"Because any man with a brief case can steal more money than any man with a gun." -- Don Henley
I have no credit card, ne Paypal. I live in a small town and pay cash for everything. "Where you keep your money determines who can steal from you."
No one has (yet) successfully stolen from my CC nor PayPal account.
Chase is really on the ball with fraud detection, with a tiny rate of false positives (which only happened when we traveled out of state w/o telling them). A quick phone call cleared it right up.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Chase sounds good. Most critical, I suppose, is this: if hackers steal your money, does Chase reimburse you? I live in rural Thailand. I don't even trust the Internet cables here. - www.andycanfield.com
So massive there have been just 33 comments in 6 hours.
if hackers steal your money, does Chase reimburse you?
They've never (tried to AFAICT) gotten into my bank accounts, and CC fraud has (so far) always been caught early enough that I've not lost anything. Vendors might have taken a hit, though.
I live in rural Thailand. I don't even trust the Internet cables here.
Can't help you with that part...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Chase is good in my experience. They let you set up your own alerts, for example they'll send you a text message anytime a purchase is made over a certain dollar amount. You can set it to $1 and receive a text every single time the card is used, which is nice both for fraud detection and for remembering how much money you're spending on recurring subscriptions. I think other card issuers offer this feature now but Chase was the first of my cards to implement that. They were also the first to send me a chip-style card, almost a year before the requirement became effective.
All credit card issuers in the US are required to reimburse you for unauthorized charges. The law states you're liable for up to $50 but in practice I've never heard of a card issuer sticking the customer with any charge at all, if you dispute a (legitimately) fraudulent charge, they just remove it from your statement. Not sure how things work in Thailand. Anecdotally, I've never seen a bogus charge on my Chase Freedom card, but I don't know whether that's because they've prevented things from going through or whether nobody's tried.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Suck kers.