Hackers try to steal 3 bln rbl from Russian banks over 6 mos

MOSCOW, Jun 15 (PRIME) -- Hackers have tried to steal 2.87 billion rubles from Russian banks over the past six months, but real losses have been at some 1 billion rubles, Alexander Chebar, a consultant at the central bank’s monitoring center, said Wednesday at a meeting.

“The total amount is 2.87 billion rubles, including 570 million rubles that were suspended and about 1.2 billion rubles that were blocked on accounts of credit organizations,” Chebar said.

Figures provided by the Internal Ministry were similar. Yevgeny Mikheyev, deputy director of the cybercrime department at the ministry, said hackers tried to steal 2.81 billion rubles.

“A much lower amount was actually stolen. The bulk of money was stopped thanks to mistakes of perpetrators and counteractions of the cybercrime department jointly with (the central bank). These figures are real and criminals want more: 1 billion rubles could become the amount of an average fraud,” Mikheyev said.

“In 2014, they learnt to work with servers responsible for automated-teller machine networks, and machines started giving out money; in 2014–2015, they mastered card processing; in 2015, they approached (an automated banking system); I’ll keep silence for 2016,” he said.

(66.0306 rubles – U.S. $1)

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