Hackers Steal $6.7M In Bank Cyber Heist 91
Orome1 writes "A perfectly planned and coordinated bank robbery was executed during the first three days of the new year in Johannesburg, and left the targeted South African Postbank — part of the nation's Post Office service — with a loss of some $6.7 million. The cyber gang behind the heist was obviously very well informed about the post office's IT systems, and began preparing the ground for the heist a few months before, by opening accounts in post offices across the country and compromising an employee computer in the Rustenburg Post Office."
Re: (Score:2)
And you expect credibility while posting as an AC and off-topic, why?
Re:Organized trolling campaign on Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Not sure if serious. he posted evidence, you just don't like it. Refute the claims.. oh wait you won't even post your name. great job.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
he clearly showed that Bonch and Overly Critical Guy had posts which were themes on the same base material. Certainly, a professional advertiser would use such a permutation. That's evidence enough for the court of slashdot... the burden of proof is yours, AC.
Re:Organized trolling campaign on Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
They're both Apple fanboys, apart from that they have nothing in common. Bonch is one of the bloggers on MacJournal.
Re: (Score:2)
Go away, DCTech. Eat your down mods like the office drone that you are.
Hi Bonch / Overly Critical Guy! (Score:1, Informative)
This "shill" crap that has been flying around lately has to stop.
such as Galestar, NicknameOne, and flurp
Oh, please. It is obvious that this crapflood is from bonch (== Overly Critical Guy) who has a problem with Galestar, NicknameOne, flurp, and GreatBunzinni.
bonch: The "shill" accusations flying around on Slashdot lately are getting out of control. [slashdot.org]
Overly Critical Guy: This isn't bonch... Aren't you Galestar/NicknameOne/flurp who replies to all his posts? [slashdot.org]
Overly Critical Guy: Hi, GreatBunzinni. How do I know it's you? ... This is not bonch.... Signed, NOT bonch [slashdot.org]
"This isn't bonch"? Ha ha. BUSTED!
bonch
Now let's see the reports of their capture. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not whether you can get into a bank, or even out of it, it's how long you can keep the money.
It will teach them to not have so many holidays I hope!
"compromising an employee computer" (Score:4, Funny)
Surprised it took so long for somebody to do this (Score:5, Interesting)
I was part of a small team that described a pretty similar attack scenario to a customer almost 10 years back. It is no surprise at all that this worked and it would work in a lot of other places as well. The only really tricky part is coordinating the mules (and keeping them quiet) as you do not know how much money is available at each specific ATM. But you can guess by observing usage patterns (counting customers) and how often they are re-stocked.
Re:Surprised it took so long for somebody to do th (Score:4, Informative)
I'm much more surprised by the fact that they managed to take about 1% of the entire assets of the wanna-be bank. That's pretty disturbing - because that means that nothing was working right. Not their security, not their required privileges, not their fraud detection, nothing. Note to self: don't do business in SA.
honestly, this has probably happened in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
im guessing that the main reason it seems like an 'unusual south africa thing' is because US banks never, ever talk about this kind of thing.
partly out of embarassment, partly because the entire system is based on 'security through obscurity'.
----
of course, oblig. comment about how thousands of US banks failed in 2008/9/10 due to the CDO fraud system - which directly involved and benefited the ratings agencies. but its almost like nobody cares about that. they care about 5 million stolen from ATMs, but not about 2 trillion stolen from the taxpayers.
Re: (Score:2)
Nearly every attack, most likely including this one, was an inside job.
Besides, every bank in the world that isn't American invests ridiculous amounts into security (and fails). American banks, well, they also fail. But American banks are pretty unique in that they will only invest a reasonable amount to prevent fraud going out of control. They will actually not go after every single instance of fraud.
Of course, one of the big screwups exploited this exact "weakness".
Re: (Score:3)
The correct conclusion is that incompetent governments should not be involved in banking.
But incompetent corporations should?
Re: (Score:2)
But incompetent corporations should?
I think you meant: But incompetent corporations are?
Also, not sure about off-shore but in the states the government is not involved in the banks which are private entities for the most part, no idea about SA, but it doesn't seem so? lol
Re: (Score:3)
I'm much more surprised by the fact that they managed to take about 1% of the entire assets of the wanna-be bank.
At least, that means that their ATMs were well-stocked for the long New Years' break. Around here they'd have run out of money on the second day...
Re:Surprised it took so long for somebody to do th (Score:4, Informative)
It didn't:
http://inaudit.com/audit/it-audit/online-theft-that-sucked-13m-from-financial-firm-in-florida-unmasked-9888/ [inaudit.com]
This was in Florida last year.
Re: (Score:3)
Summary is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
42m Rand is not 6.7m USD, it is more like 5.2m.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Now just 4.3m, ... 5 minutes later ... ... ;)
2.1m,
0.1m
now you are better off burning it for heat than trying to pay your bills with it
Re: (Score:1)
wrong African country.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Summary is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
That's Zimbabwe. SA, while experiencing considerable inflation in the 90's, is reasonably stable now, and no where near the level of inflation in zimbabwe.
1 rand used to be worth around 1 USD, IIRC (apartheid era). inflation went up with political change, and by around 2000? it was 10 or so to a dollar, and is something like 6-7 these days. So 50-100% some years, less overall, which is bad... but not hyperinflation, where prices double in days or hours, instead of years (like in zimbabwe).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
and is something like 6-7 these days
1 U.S. dollar = 8.03322542 South African rands
42 million South African rands = 5.228286 million U.S. dollars
Good thing we're not on the internet, or it would look a little stupid to be making up numbers when there are perfectly good sources available.
Re: (Score:3)
It is my understanding that Zimbabwe's currency has settled down to a value of 0. They use US$ now. Yes, they are printing them too.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure Zimbabwe would print USD if it could, but I doubt that it can.
"...according to diplomats here, a German company, Giesecke and Devrient GmbH, prints about half of the government's currency and also supplies all of its banknote paper." - http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/07/01/where-the-money-isn-t.html [thedailybeast.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I understand they aren't very good copies. The good copies are from N. Korea and Iran.
Re: (Score:2)
The $ sign in front of the 6.
Re: (Score:3)
Many countries use the $ sign you insensitive clod.
Re: (Score:2)
Many programmers (and Excel users!) use the $ sign you insensitive clod.
FTFY.
Seriously though, for currency, other than USD?
Not if they want people to know what the hell they're talking about.
Re:Summary is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Have you ever been outside of the US? Or are you just talking out of your ass?
In Canada we have a dollar ... the symbol is the standard '$' used by most places that have currency they call dollars. There is no other symbol on the keyboard, the way you differentiate is something like "$100 CDN" -- and within Canada, we don't even do that.
If it wasn't SOPA protest blackout day, you could read a list [wikipedia.org] of places, but this [xe.com] will pretty much show you what is used. Almost 30 countries besides the US express their currency with the $ sign.
I'm afraid if you're claiming that only the US dollar is described using the $ sign you're completely mistaken ... because it's a pretty widespread symbol.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry but nobody outside of Canada is going to convert the currency of South Africa to the currency of Canada to clarify the amount of money stolen. It is quite obvious that the use of $ meant USD, just like it does 95% of the time on the internet. If you want to have hurt feelings, go right on ahead.
Re: (Score:2)
The poster asserted that nobody ever uses the $ sign to represent anything but US dollars, which is clearly false. All I'm saying.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're referring to me, that's not what I said.
I said if they want others to know what they mean, they don't.
(e.g. if they post "$6.00" on Slashdot, a US-based website, and expect readers to understand they mean $6 CDN, they are foolish).
And yes, I've been outside the US: UK, Hong Kong, Africa, Japan... and yes, even Canada.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Contextually speaking how many of those other currencies would realistically be the intent of the $ in front of this figure? I am aware other countries use the $ symbol however it is completely pointless to create an article where you convert the South Africa currency to Canadian. It is very obvious, even to the worst pedantic, that they were talking USD.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And no doubt falling like a stone on this news.
That's nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFY (Score:4, Interesting)
Politicians have been stealing much larger amounts for years.
Re: (Score:1)
They're in it together, in case you haven't noticed.
How possible is it that it was an inside job? (Score:2)
How could an investigation rule out a possible inside job? These hackers are pretty good at covering their tracks.
One of the many clever ways they employed in one heist, was to run malicious code that incapacitated random parts of the system once it detected that it was itself under some kind of detection or surveillance. Clever indeed.
Re:How possible is it that it was an inside job? (Score:4, Insightful)
How could an investigation rule out a possible inside job?
In Soviet Russia, inside job rules out possible investigation.
Re: (Score:2)
I only skimmed the article, but didn't see a reference to OS. How do you know what their architecture is?
Re:And terrorists thank you for running windows (Score:4, Informative)
And to back it up
....$telnet www.postbank.co.za 80
....
Trying 165.8.13.24...
Connected to www.postbank.co.za.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Content-Length: 1635
Content-Type: text/html
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:35:38 GMT
Connection: close
The page cannot be found
Anybody running windows on their website is highly likely running it inside.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I do this with my web servers. Make them report as if they were IIS while it's really apache or lighttpd.
I do this too... and then check my logs for attempted exploits which I can use against real IIS and ASP sites...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Anybody running windows on their website is highly likely running it inside.
If you're saying they're likely running it inside in some capacity, agreed. If you're arguing that running your public website on IIS automatically implies you're running all your core business processes on Windows, that's a heck of a stretch. I've never come across a business that's entirely homogeneous.
Re: (Score:3)
But, when companies run IIS on the front-end, then their process servers will very likely be heavily into windows. Their DB may actually be oracle on sun, mainframe
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, I wish I had mod points so I could mod parent "Flamebait."
When will idiots understand that windows is the best friends of terrorist and criminals?
With an opening statement like that, all the following dialogue is rendered irrelevant.
Why not just "bank robbers"? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I could understand the mass media using the word "hackers" here but /. should know better. These guys are just bank robbers and we dont differentiate between bank robbers who use handguns vs those with knives vs those who claim to have a bomb strapped to them.
Sure we do: "masked gunmen held up", "'pizza bomber' bank robber", "mad bomber bank robbery", and bank robbers who use knives are called stupid unless they have a whole gang.
Not the first time in SA (Score:2)
This isn't the first "cyber heist" in South Africa, just the first one to make the news.
Seriously, though, criminals realised long ago that you can steal more electronically than you can carry in a 'traditional' heist. Just look at the Russian's and their level of organised e-crime!
Re: (Score:2)
Stand by for the outlawing of cash. Any fraudulent cash transactions could then be reversed at will. Moving product stolen with funnymoney is much harder
Dear Mr. South African Postbank Postmaster General (Score:5, Funny)
"Hi, this is Jo from I.T...." (Score:1)
I am pretty sure their Systems Analysts and Programmers will cop most of the shit that is coming for what I predict is some stupid emplyees fault. "Yes, what can I do for you Jo?"
I could be wrong, but that's my take.
...sigh... and they worked SO hard on the book. (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole book is this heist.
Literally.
Just check out the summary.
The thing that makes this book series special is that they don't say, "I ran nmap and knew from the output they were running a webserver."
They say "I ran nmap with 'sudo nmap -P0 -T3 -p 80 127.0.0.1 -oA localscan'
And got:
Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org/ [nmap.org] ) at 2012-01-17 20:55 PST Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1) Host is up (0.000083s latency). PORT STATE SERVICE 80/tcp open http Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.07 seconds And could see from the line "80/tcp open http"
http://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Network-How-Own-Continent/dp/1931836051 [amazon.com]
Apparently they are also operating a CA (Score:3)
Asked if there were concerns about the risk the security breach posed to government departments using the Trust Centre hosted by the post office...
If that's what I think it is, look forward to another wave of MITM-facilitating rogue certificates, this time from South Africa...
, Pule said: "The centre has high security parameters to protect all the services delivered through it."
oh, after that much buzz-word laden alphabet soup, I feel so much better. Hopefully their flux capacitors are fully charged or else there high security parameters might unload.
Re: (Score:2)
From the second link:
, Pule said: "The centre has high security parameters to protect all the services delivered through it."
They were originally considering the low and medium security parameters as well. Unfortunately, the chairman of the board demanded only the highest security, so they only implemented that. Such a shame, because now the low and medium parameters are completely unsecured.
This is not a mundane detail Michael! (Score:3)
No problem.. (Score:2)
Since Money is just an abstract representation of value that only works as well as the agreed use by those using it, so to ease trade (vs. barter) and in this case its wasn't even paper or coin, they can type the numbers back into the system, like it was never gone. And this would be far from the first or last time the banksters do this.
This idea that to much of this abstract tool in circulation leads to inflation is bull shit, just and excuse of the banksters to play their game of manipulating the economie
Oceans 14? (Score:3)
Is this the one where George sets up a house to be tilted, no wait, that was the second? .....
Oh yeah, ok, they rent a whole bunch of small mini coopers and.....nope...
Ok, I got it....she has to go under all the infrareds and slowly stealth her way through to the
Ok, nevermind, I think I am overloaded as it is...movin on....nothin I want to see here.