Saturday, January 24, 2009

Clerical Error Foiled Sumitomo Bank Hack

John E. Dunn writes on TechWorld:

The largest near heist in banking history failed because the men accused of trying to carry it out didn't properly fill in a single field in an electronic transfer form.

This is one of the extraordinary details that have emerged in the trial of three men accused of having tried in September and October 2004 to rob Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui bank of an eye-watering £229 million ($318 million at today's exchange) from inside its office, in the City of London.

The three men directly involved - Kevin O'Donoghue, a bank security supervisor and two Belgian software experts, Jan Van Osselaer, 32 and Gilles Poelvoorde, 34 - admit their role in the attempted theft.

Far from using a sophisticated remote hacking scheme, the accused men chose a much simpler way of breaking into the bank's systems - they walked in the front door.

More here.

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