CnetNews.com

Citigroup denies it, but its Citibank unit was reportedly robbed of tens of millions of dollars, the victim of a cyberattack by members of a Russian criminal gang, says Tuesday’s Wall Steet Journal.

The attack was discovered this past summer, says the Journal, but investigators for the FBI and National Security Agency believe it could have happened months or a year prior. The two agencies have reportedly shared information with the Department of Homeland Security and Citigroup to defend against the attack. The investigation is supposedly ongoing, with no word on whether or not any of the stolen money has been found.

Investigators initially became suspicious after spotting traffic coming from IP addresses once used by the Russian Business Network, a Russian gang of cybercriminals who went off the radar back in 2007, notes the Journal. But reports have surfaced that members of the gang have since regrouped to launch a wave of new attacks.

Well, naturally Citigroup doesn’t want to admit that the Russians were able to do this.




  1. AdmFubar says:

    i bet they run winders too…
    i wonder what bank M$ keeps it’s money in..

  2. Troublemaker says:

    Good for the Russians. About time somebody screwed these assholes over.

  3. Improbus says:

    Thieves stealing from thieves. Who am I supposed to be rooting for?

  4. sargasso says:

    The bank needs a new information architect.

  5. Winston says:

    Citibank thieves steal from the taxpayer. Thieves steal from Citibank. Repeat.

  6. Father says:

    In the 1980s I helped create an online system from scratch (BBS). It was a piece of crap, but did the job.

    At least one a guy emailed me saying he was going to hack the system and take it over. I told him go ahead and try, it is impossible to do hack the system. At the time most similar systems were hackable, hence his bravado.

    He shortly gave up.

    I knew everything about how the system worked, and knew what he could and couldn’t do. The system was never hacked by anyone AFAIK.

    The problem at the time, as today, are that “operating systems” et al are designed to be flexible, and by extension, hackable. Until dippy “software engineers” start designing the underlying system not the be flexible (completely locked down), these problems will continue to exist. This means developing every bit of code from scratch using trustworthy professionals.

    I would suspect that for this particular system, a programmer left in a backdoor (as they ALWAYS seem to do), and that DB was used. This is just my personal speculation based on my experience with programmer psychology.

  7. Breetai says:

    Change you can believe in.

  8. ECA says:

    banks only CARE when you dont pay.
    For their OWN money..ITS GUARANTEED by the fed.
    Its a write off..

  9. Alphanumeric says:

    Is it wrong that I’m actually rooting for the bad guys on this one?

  10. soundwash says:

    Inside Job.

    Digital money is the best scam going. Stealing 0’s and 1’s (digital money) is a scam better still.

    claim a loss, write it off on your taxes, add 0’s and 1’s back into system.

    everyone happy, except of course, the tax payers, -who will ultimately be billed no matter what. -to service the debt, of course.

    I hope i live to see the day when all forms of money (and monetization) are eliminated.

    -s

  11. deowll says:

    If they had hacked the bank they would have cleaned out more than one account.

    The bad guys hacked one guy’s account and the bank got his money back. It’s pretty clear they had his personal information.

    Not the same story at all.


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