Eight members of an alleged hacking
ring responsible for stealing up to $9 million from automated teller
machines located in hundreds of locations across the world have been
indicted by federal prosecutors.
In total, the eight people
indicted face charges ranging from wire fraud, computer fraud and
access device fraud to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy.
The hacking ring is based in Eastern Europe, with prosecutors
indicating they are in Russia, Moldova and Estonia.
Specifically,
the hacker ring raised red flags after compromising the RBS Worldpay
computer network, which is the Royal Bank of Scotland Group
processing division, when they cloned prepaid ATM card information.
Once they had the necessary information, they were able to withdraw
money from more than 2,100 ATM machines.
According to
a Wired article, Oleg Covelin, 28, from Chisinau, Moldova;
Sergei Tsurikov, 25, from Tallinn, Estonia; Viktor Pleschchuk, 28, of
St. Petersburg, Russia; and a fourth person, "Hacker 3,"
are accused of "perhaps the most sophisticated and organized
computer fraud attack ever conducted."
The data breach
took place last November, according to RBS Worldplay, with the
company publicly announcing the network issue in December. A
total of 1.5 million cardholders were affected by the breach, which
security experts say could happen again to other organized hacker
groups.
Although this hacker group has been busted by the
feds, there are still many other unknown hacker groups based in the
same region, security analysts note.