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 500M bank theft foiled
March 21, 2005
A hi-tech attempt to steal $423m from the London offices of the Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui has been thwarted by police. A gang of cybercriminals compromised Sumitomo's computer systems in October last year in a bid to illegitimately transfer money to a series of 10 separate accounts overseas.
In a recent arrest an Israeli police has caught a person it concedes to be a member of a broader criminal ring potentially involving dozen of individuals operating from different world locations.
Yaron Blondy, 35, of Holon, was arrested by Israeli police on Wednesday after an attempt to transfer $26.7 million to a bank account in his country. He has been charged with money laundering and deception. The plan was thwarted before any cash was transferred, the Sumitomo representative told the media. Police National Fraud Unit representative Chief Inspector Meir Hayoun told the court that the money were to be transferred to a bank account registered to Warro Fuel Marketing, registered in the name of a suspect.
As the operation seeking to identify and penalize everyone involved is still ongoing, police is giving scant details as to what means were used by the crooks to compromise the bank's system. It is believed that the passwords logging and dissemination system had been installed somewhere on the banks' computers that was communicating bank clients' key presses to the perpetrators. It is yet unclear whether the keylogger was physically brought in and locally supported or remotely installed and administered.
Takashi Morita, head of communications at Sumitomo in Tokyo, told the Press Association that the bank had not suffered any losses as a result of the attempted heist. "We have undertaken various measures in terms of security and we have not suffered any financial damage," he said.
Security experts are praising the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. for openly saying it's been the target, as companies prefer to steer away from informing the public of past security breaches.
"Generally, big businesses don't like to talk about any security problems they may have," said Graham Cluley, senior technical consultant at security software company Sophos PLC. "Clearly, Sumitomo did very well, they didn't lose any money, and they involved the authorities."
Arthur Barnes at security integrator Diagonal Security agreed. "I think this is very positive; it warns the rest of the community," he said. "Someone was always going to have to stand up and say this is going on. It's very brave. They've really done the right thing. Too often this sort of thing is swept under the carpet."
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