Hacker Sells Home To Pay RBS

A Russian hacker who breached the safety of RBS' WorldPay service and stole $9m (6m) has had his skill sole to indemnify the bank.

Viktor Pleshchuk's two flats and two cars, a BMW and a Lada, were auctioned off in Saint Petersburg on Monday.

According to a Russian headlines portal RIA Novosti, the sale lifted 10m roubles (200,000).

It reported that the allowance had been eliminated to RBS, something the bank was not able to to confirm.

Mr Pleshchuk and 7 other Eastern European hackers managed to obtain their hands on the personal information of thousands of RBS customers in 2008.

They used the information to emanate counterfeit withdraw cards and withdraw outrageous amounts of cash from ATMs in as many as 280 cities around the world.

The allowance was taken from 2,100 bank cash machines inside of 12 hours in the US, Russia, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada.

Kaspersky Labs arch safety consultant Alex Gostev mentioned that the real hacking was not the many complex charge the criminals had to treat with.

"The many engaging segment was the last theatre of the assault - the organization of pile withdrawals all over the world," he said.

"They had to find more than 150 people in [numerous] cities, give any a of them the instructions and the counterfeit cards, organize synchronised withdrawal - all of this shows that it was a group of rarely skilled professionals".

Once arrested, Mr Pleshchuk pleaded guilty.

In 2009, he and the rest of the hackers were moreover pursued by authorities in the US.

The 8 were charged in the state of Georgia, where the Atlanta-based card-processing company, RBS WorldPay, was targeted.

In September 2010, Mr Pleshcuk received a six-year dangling judgment and an demand to pay $8.9m (6m) in restitution.

He managed to prevent prison by pledging to sell his skill and indemnify the bank is to damage caused.

Brian Krebs, an American publisher specialising in cybercrime and P.C. security, not long ago tracked an ATM heist that was eerily identical to the RBS attack.

He explained that the enemy managed to obtain in to the US-based FIS - Fidelity National Information Services - a of the world's largest processors of prepaid withdraw cards. They then planted a remote access trojan pathogen and used the information that they performed to tip up the reloadable prepaid withdraw cards they had compromised.

After that, they cloned the stolen withdraw cards, sent copies of them to co-conspirators in more than 6 countries, and raided the bank's accounts.

Mr Krebs mentioned the FIS situation was really sufficient similar to the RBS case, "clearly organized and professional".

"When the supports on the cards reached shut to zero, the hackers used their remote access to tip up the cards again," he told BBC News.

"They did this over and over and stole [millions] in reduction than 24 hours. These guys had access, they had a plan, and they had the means, and they executed it brilliantly."

Joseph Menn, a Financial Times contributor who covers technology-related privacy and safety issues, mentioned that identical attacks are still concealment criminals millions.

"The FBI mentioned last week it is questioning online bank rascal crimes with losses totalling $85 million," mentioned Mr Menn.

"The complaint is that the technology used to execute such crimes is increasingly existing and the penalties, as you have seen with the Pleshchuk case, are exceedingly light even in the singular eventuality of an arrest, due mostly to corruption.

"From a cost-benefit perspective, there is no reason for crook enterprises not to twice their bets on general bank crimes, so the complaint will go on to obtain worse.