British and Israeli authorities are investigating an attempted robbery of $421.2 million at the London offices of the Japanese bank Sumitomo.
A gang hacked into computers at Sumitomo in October 2004 and attempted to transfer the cash to 10 accounts around the world, the Israeli fraud squad said on Thursday.
The theft has raised fears of the threat posed by organized gangs of computer hackers. British police have in the past warned financial institutions to be alert to such crimes.
A spokeswoman for Britain’s National High Tech Crime Unit confirmed there was an ongoing investigation into the attempted robbery but declined to offer further details.
Israeli police said they had arrested a 32-year-old man in connection with the crime.
Yaron Bolondi was arrested in a suburb near Tel Aviv under suspicion of being involved in an attempt to launder approximately $27 million. Bolondi's business account had allegedly been the intended recipient of a share of the cash, Britain's Sky News reported.
Two British investigators had flown out to Israel. No further details were immediately available on the nature of Bolondi's connection to the crime.
“The fact is it was a total failure and it was a total failure along the line, and the crooks left their foot print, which we gave to the police,” said Philip Martin, general counsel of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. Europe.
Keylogging software has mushroomed over the last 12 months. British computer protection company Sophos counts 15 to 20 new keylogging programs every day, three to four times as many as a year ago.
'This is affecting everyone'
These programs target computer users who do on-line banking and other financial transactions, recording keystrokes and thereby acquiring account numbers and passwords.
“This is affecting everyone using a computer,” said senior technical consultant Graham Cluley.
Cluley said there is a 50 percent chance that an unprotected computer will be infected within 10 minutes after connecting it to the Internet, even without opening Web sites or emails. This risk rises to 90 percent after 40 minutes.
How Sumitomo computers could have been infected was unclear, as they would likely have run anti-virus software programs.
“Our computer systems are such that you can’t get into them,” Sumitomo’s Martin said.
Besides keylogging software there is also a hardware-based version, which requires someone to put a small box between the keyboard and the computer. The box, with some computer memory built in, would store the keystrokes.
“Spyware,” or software that spies on people, is available at as little as $100, according to the NCC Group, an information technology specialist.
The NCC Group said to protect themselves companies need to ’lock down’ their computers, carry out regular sweeps of the network, conduct regular testing and make sure they know the technician installing the software.
