Attackers steal $13.5 million from Indian Bank

It has been revealed that India’s second largest cooperative bank Cosmos Bank has been breached by hackers, who stole over ₹940 million ($13.5 million) in three attacks over a span of three days.

According to reports, two of the attacks saw ₹805 million ($11.4 million) withdrawn in 14,849 ATM transactions across 28 countries. In the first attack, hackers withdrew ₹780 million ($11 million) in 12,000 ATM transactions via the VISA card system. Two hours later, the second attack took place, which resulted in ₹25 million ($400,000) stolen in 2,849 ATM transactions via the RuPay debit card system.

Despite the fact that Cosmos Bank detected the attacks, they were unable to prevent a third one, which took place two days after the initial two. Hackers used the bank’s SWIFT inter-banking system to make three transactions to a bank account in Hong Kong, resulting in another ₹139 million ($2 million) stolen.

The theft is under investigation by the police, but the bank did reveal that a proxy switch was created and that the fraudulent payment approvals were passed by the proxy switching system. The bank also reassured its customers that funds from accounts were not taken, so customers were not affected by the thefts.