Today saw the arrest of eight individuals in Moldova and Romania as part of an investigation into worldwide ATM hacking. They allegedly used a malware named Tyupkin to infect cash machines and subsequently empty them. The gang was believed to have made millions by infecting ATMs across Europe and beyond. Europol, which coordinated the operation, didn’t provide names of those arrested, and it’s unclear if the masterminds of the operation were taken down.
But whoever they are, there’s little doubt the Tyupkin creators made good money with ostensibly little risk. According to criminal forum adverts, they were taking a significant chunk of the cash collected by so-called “money mules”, who took far more chances with their freedom.
One deal offered by someone controlling a variant of Tyupkin showed how the mules were so thoroughly swindled, even as they helped swindle the banks. According to Russian cyber intelligence company Group-IB, a programmer on a Russian forum, posting in March this year, sought mules to upload his Tyupkin version in ATMs across the world. He or she asked for $5,000. In return, the mule would get the malware and attack code that had to be loaded onto a card. That card would eventually activate the malware at the ATM so it would start spewing cash.
Before that, the buyer would then have to dismantle the cash machine and upload the malware via the USB port. The mule was then advised to wait until the cash machine was re-stocked and then take all of the funds they could, said Dmitriy Volkov, from Group-IB. But 40 per cent of the total had to be returned to the programmer.
Once one takes into account ATMs are said to contain less than $10,000 at any one time, this seems like a poor deal for the mule. Say a fresh bottom feeder manages to hack into a cash machine with $10,000 and takes it all, they have to give away $4,000. They’ve already handed over $5,000. So they start off just $1,000 up to the $9,000 of a coder hiding behind a screen.
Source: forbes Technology
0 comments:
Post a Comment