Top Biggest Cyber Robberies
Top Biggest Cyber Robberies
8. OPERATION HIGH ROLLER
A multinational network of hackers orchestrated a series of bank account thefts in 2012. They did it all from far away on their laptops. At some point before the crimes occurred, the perpetrators gained access to financial networks. throughout Europe, the US, and Latin America via phishing bank staff credentials. Through this access, The organization inserted a variety of viruses that enabled them to alter banking transactions. and started hunting for high-value accounts, such as businesses or government accounts, to target. According to analysts, the hackers didn't concentrate on any accounts containing anything. The raid was for no less than a million dollars, which earned the raid the appellation Operation High Roller. Once their targets were identified, hackers utilized a variety of servers in Albania, Russia, and The US is to oversee as many as 10 specific varieties of malware and authorize money transfers.
and ATM withdrawals from banks in several countries. By hopping between servers, attackers were able to elude discovery for some time as they manipulated huge bank accounts. While security experts at McAfee revealed that the gang tried to move and withdraw, For as much as $2. 5 billion, they successfully collected about $80 million in cash by wire. transfers and ATM withdrawals. To this day, no arrests have been made after the incident. despite it being one of the most profitable bank robberies ever pulled off. Biggest Cyber Robberies
7. BANGLADESH BANK CYBER HEIST
Biggest cyber attacks in history In April 2016, Bangladesh criminals pulled off a huge bank heist by penetrating the network of the central bank of Bangladesh. To obtain the money, attackers phished banks. employee credentials and inserted highly-specific malware built exclusively for the SWIFT banking system. The protocol This is a communication platform used by hundreds of banks throughout the globe. to authorize payments between financial organizations. Ultimately, the attackers accessed computers They were permitted to make substantial bank transactions, and they initiated many transfers. the money which belongs to the Bangladesh bank itself.
This theft requires more than just hackers, however. People connected with the theft opened bank accounts throughout the globe for the money to be sent to The premise was that if they transferred it all to one location and that one transfer failed, then the entire procedure would fail. So the crime was divided up into numerous smaller transactions into different bank accounts controlled by the thieves. Then people who held such accounts would withdraw the money. In all, they sought to transfer $951 million USD. Nearly a billion dollars were stolen! But owing to various mistakes and typos, not all the money made it to the thief. accounts. Only 81 million dollars made it out. which is still a lot. The thieves promptly moved it from their bank account to a casino. Once at the casino, they gambled. for a short period as a technique to launder the money, then they cashed out their chips and left. After the robbery, experts tied this to the well-known North Korean Lazarus Group.
A gang of military-trained hackers broke into North Korea, and it looks like they got away. with it. The US has indicted Park Jin Hyok for being responsible for this, but there have been no arrests. have been produced, and it is doubtful that none ever will. Top 8 Biggest Cyber Robberies
6. THE BITGRAIL BUG
In February 2018, an Italian crypto exchange named BitGrail said it was hacked and suffered damage. a significant loss of a given crypto currency. A leaked communication provides us information as to what transpired. Supposedly, there was a flaw in the blockchain. or exchange. They found that a user was sending Nano cryptocurrency from one wallet to another. which is normal. But the transfer was exploiting the bug, and instead of the money transferring As it should, twice as much of what was sent as what was received in the wallet. What's worse is that the amount on the block chain did not show that twice as much was received So whoever was exploiting this bug was doing it under the radar. But Bitgrail saw some anomalies, and as soon as they figured out what was going on, they The Nano community shut down transactions and reported the loss to the police, but the damage had been done.
The attacker was able to generate and withdraw 17 million Nano coins to an external wallet, which was worth $175 million at the time. Because Bitgrail lost that much money, it caused them to shut down, perhaps forever. They were not transparent about the details of the incident, leaving it open to speculation. Some are even suggesting that what really went on there may have been an exit scam. It's been 3 years now and the site still has not come back up. A few details are actually known, but when $175 million is stollen in cryptocurrency, it makes this one of the largest. heists in history. Seychelles, September 2020 This attack focuses on a popular crypto exchange called KuCoin. who claims to have over 8 million users. Somehow, somewhere, the private key to their hot wallet was leaked. See crypto exchanges They have a hot and cold wallet to keep their users' money in. Think of the hot wallet as the A cash register inside a store You only need enough for a day to be in there, and you should Whenever you can, sweep out the extra and put it in a bank vault or cold storage account. Top Biggest Cyber Robberies
5. KUCOIN
Biggest cyber attacks in 2020 Well, early in the morning on September 26, 2020, KuCoin's team received an alert from their risk management system. When their security team looked into it, they noticed something suspicious. There is activity in some of the exchange's hot wallets used for handling transactions. The team immediately They shut down the servers but still saw transfers happening from their accounts to wallets outside. of the exchange. Over the next several minutes, KuCoin security watched as someone transferred a large number of bitcoins, etherium, and other cryptocurrencies to multiple accounts outside of the exchange. Once crypto coins are transferred to another wallet, there is There is no way to undo it and get your money back. It's gone forever. But the Kucoin team was able to take control of their wallets before the thieves could empty them completely. The Kucoin thieves were able to take $275 million worth of cryptocurrencies from Kucoin. But surprisingly enough, Kucoin did not go out of business because of this. They fixed the problem and came back online shortly after.
An investigation by Chainalysis found evidence that the thieves were from the North Korean-based The Lazarus Group, the same hacking team that robbed the Bangladesh bank, the exchange was capable of minimizing damage and protecting its users from impacts, but if it was the The Lazarus group, on the other hand, is safe and secure within North Korea's isolation. Biggest cyber attacks
4. MT. GOX
February 2, 2014, Tokyo Mt. Gox, the leader in bitcoin exchanges at the time of filing for bankruptcy protection. It somehow lost its users' money. Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange run by Mark Karpel in the early 2010's. In fact, it was one of the first bitcoin exchanges. And I say bitcoin exchange rather than cryptocurrency exchange. Because bitcoin was the only crypto currency back then, and that's all they traded. So When this new-fangled digital money showed up, it attracted a lot of thieves.
Mt. Gox We faced constant web attacks, database attacks, attempted wallet snatchings, and so much more. On top of that, Mark Karpel's was mostly running the site by himself, and he made many mistakes. along the way. Mt. Gox suffered a series of bitcoin thefts while it was up. One of the first big losses It was when someone hacked into Mark's personal computer and found a bitcoin wallet there. with 300,000 of Mt. Gox's bitcoins in it. The thief was able to steal all 300,000 bitcoins. But the thief got nervous and returned 99 percent of the bitcoin back to Mark, keeping only 3,000. for themselves. There was another attack when someone got into the database of Mt. Gox and was able to steal 80,000 bitcoins. But the biggest theft at Mt. Gox was when someone got into the network, and found the I set up a hot wallet for the site, and was able to siphon off any bitcoin coming into this wallet.
This It lasted for months in 2013. And by the time Mark saw what was going on, the thief had It has already cost over 500,000 bitcoins. This ultimately caused the site to fold up. go under. This meant that users who thought they had bitcoin on the site were mistaken. They were able to get into their accounts on Mt. Gox and get their money back. In total, there were about 750,000 bitcoins stolen from Mt. Gox while it was up. That constituted 7% of all bitcoin in circulation at the time. which was worth about 450 million US. dollars. top 10 cyber attacks in world
3. COINCHECK
Tokyo Coin Check launched on January 1, 2018. one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges. exchanges at the time were targeted in what would become one of the world's largest cyber attacks.
They failed to use multi-signature authentication, a security measure they had touted as a cornerstone. of their platform's safety features. This, combined with a lack of regulatory oversight, This is what made the attack possible. So who stole the $530 million worth of NEM? A report by the IB Group says it was done by, yep, you guessed it, the Lazarus group in North Korea. North Korea has been blamed. for stealing nearly $2 billion from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges in recent years
2. THE POLY NETWORK HEIST
Biggest cyber attacks in 2021 In August 2021, a hacker exploited the poly network to steal over 600 million dollars' worth of which, by the way, should not be confused with the polygon matic coin. That It's a different thing all together. If you're not up on all the newest tech involved with, It's OK, because things are updating and innovating so fast that nobody can keep up with everything. What the poly network does is provide interoperability between blockchains. Some Some of these block chains have what are called smart contracts in them, which allow you to put
When money is sent, little pieces of code are executed when money is sent. This code can also inform the poly network. To do certain things, like exchange one coin for another without the need for a full-blown exchange. Well, this hacker was able to inject their own code into some trades, which allowed them to to convince the poly network to send the hacker tonnes of money. And this is one example of the inherent problems with innovation in the crypto currency space. There are so many different coins. exchanges, defi networks, and technologies are involved and they are developing with new At such an alarming rate, and yeah, some of this stuff isn't tested well. sufficient and has vulnerabilities. This hacker found a major vulnerability in the poly network. They were able to basically reroute money to their accounts. By doing this, they were able to steal 270 million dollars' worth of ethereum Binance smart chain tokens worth 230 million 83 million worth of polygon-matic coins And some coins too. Now it sounds like this one was just done by a single person or small group, not some actor from a nation-stateAnd this person obviously knows a lot about cryptocurrencies and could
They can probably figure out a clever way to cash out on that and live large for the rest of their lives. life. But in a twist of the story, they actually decided to pay all the money back. It sounds They just tried this for fun and were surprised when it worked, but didn t want to People actually steal people's money. And yeah, as of today, this hacker has, on their own accord, They returned all of the $600 million to the rightful owners. The poly network has offered $500,000. The hacker gives the hacker a sort of bug bounty award for showing them this huge flaw. On top of that, They invited the hacker to be their chief security advisor to help them in the future. And so far, it doesn t look like Mr. White Hat hacker has taken the $500,000 or the job. And I doubt they will since they like staying anonymous and, who knows, maybe an offer like That is just bait to catch the thief.
1. CARBANK
Cyber Robbery August 2013. Cashing rings, or bands, authorities in several countries have started to catch on to cashing rings, or bands.
people who would go to ATMs and withdraw cash on behalf of cyber criminals who had transferred money to various accounts. What they uncovered was ultimately the most successful. bank robbery recorded to date. In 2013, the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky released a report about the attack. In it They said attackers injected malware into financial institutions around the world, mostly through spear phishing emails sent to low-level bank employees. The malware, which exploited A Windows vulnerability dubbed "Carbanak" allowed the attackers to get into the bank transfer. software and move money around as they wish. Once there, they were able to manipulate ATMs. to dispense cash. This was so well coordinated that the person who would go pick up the cash was I didn't even have to touch the ATM. As soon as they arrive, the money will just start spitting out until the ATMs were empty. Over the course of two years, the cybercriminals The group gained access to many banks and coordinated with a team of cashiers to get the money withdrawn. Investigators tracked the first Carbanak infection to August of 2013, and found the height of
The attacks took place during the summer of 2014. While the malware affected Most of the activity took place in China, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Russia and the US One of the reasons Carbanak was so successful was the fact that it targeted the institutions themselves rather than individual customers. This allowed the attackers more access to larger sums of money, and avoid setting off the fraud triggers meant to catch suspicious activity in individual accounts. That, combined with a highly organized team carrying out The operation made the heist the most lucrative hack ever recorded. It's hard to say how much Since so many banks were targeted, it is estimated that these thieves got away. with $900 million dollars. For the most part, it looks like whoever was behind this did not get caught. There have There have been a few arrests, but it looks to be low-level players in this operation and not the mastermind or organizers behind it all. OK, that does it for the top cyber heists.
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