Fergie's Tech Blog

Russia Takes On Cyber Criminals

Via Computerworld UK.

Russia is taking the fight to cybercriminals, quietly arresting the alleged mastermind of a major attack on the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Worldpay payment processing systems and also beefing up its controls of top level domain names.

The Russian Federal Security Service has arrested Viktor Pleshchuk, the alleged ring leader of a £6 million attack on RBS, together with other suspects, according to the Financial Times.

A US grand jury indicted Pleshchuk, Sergei Tsurikov, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia; Oleg Covelin, 28, of Chisinau, Moldova; and a person known only as Hacker 3 last November

The indictment alleges that the group used sophisticated hacking techniques to compromise the data encryption that was used by RBS WorldPay to protect customer data on payroll debit cards, which are used by companies to pay employees.

Once the encryption on the card-processing system was compromised, the hacking ring allegedly raised the account limits on compromised accounts, and then provided a network of so-called "cashers" with 44 counterfeit payroll debit cards, the US Department of Justice said.

The counterfeit cards were used to withdraw more than £6 million in just 12 hours from more than 2,100 ATMs in about 280 cities worldwide, including cities in the US, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada.

posted by Fergie @ 3/22/2010 11:44:00 AM