Europol Warns of Russian Gangs Plotting Billion Dollar Attack

Europol has warned that criminals are planning a billion dollar cyber attack on major financial institutions in the world. This warning comes at a time when banks in the US are already reeling from the security breach at JPMorgan Chase.

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By secretly listening to Internet chat rooms, Europol has discovered cyber plotting by Russian criminals who want to pull off a major attack on a global bank.

Troels Oerting, who heads Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre in The Hague, said that they have reliable information and intelligence about the gang’s plans.

Europol says that the attackers are grooming bank insiders to launch programs that will get around the monitoring systems. These insiders will turn off alarms that are designed to alert bank staff when huge amounts of money are transferred unexpectedly. In addition, a large number of bolt-holes are being built to make tracing and recovering stolen money difficult.

According to Oerting, these criminals are not interested in making thousands of minor thefts. They would rather make one big heist.

They will leave the insider behind to take punishment once they have removed the funds. While they have been planning this for some time, they are yet to pull off such a robbery. The gangs are constantly trying to penetrate security systems and thus put corporate firewalls under tremendous pressure.

Europol gets information from its moles. They are deployed in the ‘dark web’ to spy on hackers who sell and buy viruses and targets there. Gangs share information on their rivals.

Oerting feels that cyber criminals are winning the race between them and security companies. In his opinion, criminals are being attracted to cyberspace because it is a high-profit, low-risk area.

Europol’s key targets are Russian gangs. Many of them are encouraged and assisted by their governments. Europol also expects new threats to come from Africa. Western law enforcement cannot prosecute them and hence Oerting feels that finding a way to stop them rather than prosecute them is the solution.

Banks tend to keep attacks secret, and by doing so they are actually creating more trouble for themselves. In fact, disrupting a criminal gang becomes a whole lot easier if security agencies get to hear about the attacks quickly.

Security Breaches: Biggest Treat That Banks Face

Cyber attacks are making it to the top of financial regulators’ and banks’ urgent attention lists. The public rarely hear about these attacks; however, the breaches at global fund manager Fidelity and the US bank JP Morgan did make headlines. A senior banker admitted that they suffer attacks on a regular basis.

The Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Treasury run regular checks to test whether financial institutions in London are ready to deal with such attacks. The latest exercise of this kind ‘Waking Shark 2′ was a mock attack launched on the wholesale banking system and involved around 200 firms. They are also planning a simulated attack on the retail banking sector.

This month JP Morgan admitted that cyber criminals had stolen details of around 83 million small business and personal accounts. President Obama was briefed on this breach. PwC also said that in 2014, there was a 50 percent increase in security breaches compared to last year.