Swedish bank Nordea was the target of one of the largest online heists.  The bank lost between 7 to 8 million Swedish kronor (a little over $1.1 million USD) in a phishing scam that had been taking place over the last 15 months, according to ZDNET UK.

Officials say the "bank robbers" used phishing emails to lure bank customers into opening emails with attachments entitled "raking.zip" or "raking.exe."  The attachments were disguised as anti-spam software, but contained a Trojan which security companies called "haxdoor.ki."

Close to 250 Nordea customers were taken by the fraud.  It was also said that attacked customers did not have anti-virus software on their computers.  Security officials claim Russian organized criminals are responsible for the heist, with no less than 121 people suspected to be involved.  Even more damning, Swedish police traced computer servers first in the U.S. and then to Russia.

"Haxdoor.ki" is typically know to install keyloggers to record keystrokes, then hides itself using a rootkit.  When users attempted to activate their Nordea accounts online, the Trojan automatically responded by bringing the customer to a fake bank homepage. 

When the customers entered their personal information, including bank numbers and passwords, the website would load to an error page claiming that the site was having technical difficulties.  The criminals then used the gathered information on the real bank page and withdrew funds from customer accounts.

Nordea claimed it knew that a few of the transactions had been false due to the unusual activity under the accounts, but a majority of the transactions had been small withdrawal amounts, therefore making it difficult to identify real transactions from the fraudulent ones.  Nordea spokesman Boo Ehlin claimed that most of the fraudulent cases were small amounts that the company thought were ordinary.

Currently, a police investigation is underway and the bank is reviewing its security procedures.