Cybercrooks slurp nearly $1m from Russian bank after pwning router at regional branch

'at what point will we come to the conclusion'

The promised benefits from getting rid of humans for robots is pure Tech-Hype... The next generation of automation will bring eye-watering theft / fraud. More fallout from 'Swift' transfers etc!

Re: Russian Central Bank's Automated Workstation Client

By any change would this 'Automated Workstation Client' run on Microsoft Windows and was compromised by a malicious email attachment?

It is Automated. The most likely point of compromise was the data fed to it - any PC with appropriate access to the bank internal systems.

Re: ATM's

If the withdrawal limit is eg $500 per day, then put the money in 1000 accounts, create 1000 cards for them, easy if they are magnetic, not so easy if the machines require chip cards, then withdraw $500 on each of them just before midnight and another $500 just after midnight.

'how its possible to take a $1 million out of a ATM in a day?'

I always wondered what's to stop all the mules just running off with money?

Re: ATM's

"Surely this would require many a barren of mules and manyt ATMs."

Depending on account limit, probably many mule accounts. No need for massive numbers of physical mules, since they can handle a few hundred cards each.

There certainly have been cases where the mule card limits have also been raised/removed.

Re: ATM's

There, one fully loaded ATM usually contain $30-80k in cash in the dollar equivalent. In large shopping center there' often an ATM room with 10+ ATMs from various banks. Daily limits are between $1.5-10k for individuals. For commercial entities, e.g. a sole trader, can be $100k+. The news mentioned 17 banks. If every mule had accounts in all 17... not too many mules.

Re: Bbbbbut we're told the Russians are the boogie men....

We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Let us commence the two-minute hate of Emmanuel Goldstein / Osama bin Laden / Vladimir Putin

It serves the government well to have enemies for the people to hate. It doesn't much matter who they are, as long as they're not the government.

Re: Bbbbbut we're told the Russians are the boogie men....

What you tend to forget about mafia wars is that they tend to war with each other far more than anyone else. There might well be a bunch of thugs in the Kremlin but they don't have control of all the gangs in Russia, nor do they have control of all the chemical and other weapons - which should be scarier than governments having this stuff because governments by necessity are far more restrained from using them.

The factor that someone in the White house is in deep to a large bunch of Russian money launderers shouldn't distract from the issue that there are several such bunches and they're not best buddies with each other.