Yet another bank has been hit by a multi-million dollar cyber theft in a similar manner to the infamous Bangladesh Bank heist, after reports revealed a Ukrainian lender has been robbed of $10 million by hackers.
English-language paper KyivPost claimed that members of the local ISACA branch had revealed the cyber bank robbery after being hired to investigate.
They claimed dozens of banks – mainly in Russia and Ukraine – have been hit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in this way.
The hackers typically scope out their target bank before launching the highly targeted attack, which usually involves submitting fraudulent transfer requests using the Swift inter-bank messaging system.
The group is apparently using publically available tools and information to carry out said attacks.
“Banks now are not sharing such information at all and are afraid of publicity,” ISACA Kyiv boss Aleksey Yankovsky is reported as saying.
ISACA clarified to Infosecurity that Yankovskyb was not speaking on behalf of the non-profit, which isn't involved with security consulting itself.
It added in a statement:
"In this particular case, individuals were hired through their consulting organization(s), and some were members of the ISACA Kyiv Chapter, which is one of our 213 independent chapters worldwide. The story associated them with their chapter membership instead of with their organizations that were engaged for the job."
For its part, Swift has repeatedly claimed that its infrastructure is not to blame for the cyber heists.
However, it has gone on the offensive by releasing a new set of security guidelines for its banking members designed to improve their baseline security.
This will involve Swift asking for more information on attacks from its customers and sharing more back with them; stronger requirements for customer-managed software; increased remote monitoring of customer environments, and more.
There have also been rumors that Swift could be considering kicking some banks off its network if they fail to raise security standards.
As for the identity of the hackers, Symantec has stuck its neck out in claiming they could be connected to the infamous Lazarus Group which has itself been linked to North Korea.
The group is thought to have been responsible for the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack.
Infosecurity has contacted ISACA for more information and will update this story when we hear back.