Hackers stole more than 2 billion rubles (US$31.1 million) from correspondent accounts at the Bank of Russia, the central bank said on Friday, the latest example of an escalation of cyberattacks on financial institutions around the globe.
Bank of Russia official Artyom Sychyov discussed the losses at a briefing, saying that the hackers had attempted to steal about 5 billion rubles.
Sychyov was commenting on a central bank report released earlier in the day, that told about hackers breaking into accounts by faking a client’s credentials. The bank provided few other details in its lengthy report.
Financial regulators around the world have recently urged banks to beef up cybersecurity in the wake of a string of high-profile heists on banks around the world.
Fears about attacks on banks have mounted since February, when unidentified cybercriminals stole US$81 million in funds that Bangladesh’s central bank had on deposit at the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Law enforcement agencies around the globe are hunting for the criminals who stole the money using fraudulent wire transfer requests sent over the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication network.
Separately, Russia on Friday said that it had uncovered a plot by foreign spy agencies to sow chaos in the country’s banking system via a coordinated wave of cyberattacks and fake social media reports about banks going bust.
Russia has been on high alert for foreign-inspired cyberattacks since US officials accused the Kremlin of being involved in hacks on US Democratic Party e-mail accounts during the US presidential election.
At the time, US Vice President Joe Biden said that the US would mount a “proportional” response to Russia.
Since then, there have been a number of cyberattacks affecting Russian institutions, although it is unclear if they were linked to the row between Moscow and Washington.
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